MONICA
Hi, my name is Monica and I have a service animal. Her name is Sky. We were denied entrance into a Chinese restaurant. I had been working with Sky for several months before she came to live with me. I was feeling pretty confident as a team when we went to the restaurant. I knew that she was able to sit quietly under a table and that she wouldn’t even be noticed by many of the other people in the restaurant. We entered the restaurant with a group of my co-workers and Sky, who at this point, had been living w/ me for a week. We were still getting to know each other but she is a great service animal and has been very well trained. We all walked to the front desk to be seated and the girl told me that I couldn’t have a dog in here. I tried to explain that she wasn’t a dog, but that she was a SERVICE ANIMAL and that we had rights. There were several of my co-workers who tried to explain it to her too and several other people in the restaurant that told her that she couldn’t refuse us service. I didn’t want to make a big scene because we had only been living together for a week and I didn’t want to “upset” her. I did ask if I could speak to the manager and she went and got her manager who said the same thing – NO DOG in here and we went through the whole thing again – Sky is not just a dog – she is a service animal and under the law she couldn’t be refused service. At this point, [...]