Trying to get Sam's Club to become Autism friendly/placards

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I have been in communication with someone from Sam's Club asking them to provide sensory safe hours for Autistic shoppers. I have asked that they provide a couple of hours either each day or each week when the tvs are turned off and no music is playing in the store so that it can be a little safer for Autistic people to shop. I don't think they can turn of lights but at least we can try to get the sound regulated a little bit and start with that. I will let you know what happens. Also, for any of you who have trouble standing in long lines, if you tell them you are Autistic, Sam's will let you pay for your goods at the customer service desk as long as you don't have too many items. I do that all the time.

I also just got a handicap parking placard which I have found is IMMENSELY helpful to me. It mitigates the time I spend looking for my car in a parking lot and being exposed to car stereos as I am walking through parking lots since they are now causing me to physically collapse. If any of you feel that a placard will be helpful to you, it is very easy to get one in the US. You get the form from the DMV and your doctor just has to fill out and sign the form. It has to be an attending physician, not a resident or a medical student. I used reason #8 on the form for my state which is neurological impairment which prevents you from walking long distances. I don't know if the forms are the same for every state or how it works in other countries but I am so glad I did this. I actually have a concussion right now from physically collapsing in a parking lot because someone was blasting a stereo. So the less amount of time I need to spend walking through parking lots, the safer I will be.

I just heard back from the lady that I am corresponding with at Sam's Club. She is going to push my request for sensory regulated shopping hours to upper management and she said in the meantime that I should ask the front desk to turn down the tvs and the music whenever I go there.

I am also a little upset that none of you have responded to this thread. This is a very important thing and I would appreciate your involvement and support and even having some of you who can to reach out to stores and businesses as well with requests and demands for sensory regulated shopping hours. We are always complaining about our needs being ignored. We need to be active in changing that.

skibum I just saw this thread now. I don't know what Sam's Club is but I'm sure it's representative of all the big box, noisy shops with bright lights, loud announcements, and impatient customers. I was in a similar place prior to Christmas where there was an employee on a motorised vehicle lifting heavy cartons onto the top shelves. His stupid machine (no idea what you call it: he drove it around and lifted boxes up high like a forklift) was doing that high-pitched beep sound non-stop (because I guess they thought customers might not otherwise notice his giant tractor thing, and get run over in the aisle?) So it beeped a high-pitched wail even when it wasn't moving or reversing in the shop. I had my hands over my ears and was audibly yelling "What the hell! OMG! OMG!" as I went into meltdown. I was so confronted by the sound I collapsed on the floor unable to leave the shop or avoid that relentless, ear-breaking assault. On top of this there was the lovely interruption of noisy intercom announcements on the loudspeaker: "Customer service needed in Aisle 2 please!", "Are you ready for Christmas? Today we're selling .... ", and the additional strain of noisy rap music because apparently they can't play Christmas carols or they might not be politically correct. I think you get the idea. It was baddd. Of course there were fluorescent lights and the brightest coloured signs / displays known to the human eye prior to implosion.

Long story short, I think I can imagine Sam's Club.

Good on you for speaking up and requesting change. Thank you so much for your initiative. I don't get to the shops very often to lodge a complaint like you have, but I will definitely state my case next time I attend.

Hugs again.

Oh, PS: I do have a parking placard, originally because of my stroke. It's permanent and I can use it anywhere. It's saved me from countless meltdowns as you describe, and it allows for a quick get-away when I do freak out in a shop.

Sam's Club is one of those big stores that you buy a membership to and get things at a supposed discount or in bulk sizes. They also own Walmart which is a big box department and grocery store combined.

I have seen and heard that forklift thing many times at Sam's Club and yes, the environment is very similar there to what you describe. I hate that you had that experience but I am so happy that you shared it. I am really glad to know that I am not the only one who physically collapsed from sensory overload. That really means a lot to me to hear that because it is not very common so people don't tend to believe me when I say that it happens to me. Thank you so much for sharing that. I am hoping that if others of you have that issue, that you would comment as well. I would love to show my family that I am not making this stuff up.

Isabella, I just copy pasted your last post here and sent it to the lady that I am talking to from Sam's Club. If anyone else wants to share similar experiences, I will make sure that the people at Sam's Club read them.

You have my permission to share!

I was just thinking about the man on the forklift thing. He wore industrial grade safety headphones to block the sound. That shows me that the shop knows the sound is a health hazard. Why then would they subject him to that god-awful beeping in the first place, and force the customers to hear it without any form of hearing protection? Why was it used during business hours? If they do have to use the stupid forklift, can't they shut the sound off? Also these places have such huge windows that there's no need for lighting at all during the day. I don't understand how they are environmentally friendly to use that much electricity, not to mention the fact they scare away all customers with sensory processing issues.

Thank you. And sorry, I wasn't thinking. I should have asked your permission first before sending your post to her. I figured you would want her to know your story and that since the post is on a public forum and is anonymous, it would be ok since it is out there for the whole world to see anyway. But thank you so much for giving permission to share.

I completely agree with you on what you are saying. I really think that a lot of these businesses do not think things through properly. I just told my brother your story and his response was that that thing has to beep. That may be so but they don't have to use it when the store is open for business. And I told him that he was missing the point. I was telling him your story because I wanted to show him that I am not the only one who has these physical responses to overload and it is not because of anything that I am doing or not doing that is causing my body to react that way. But just like with so many nts, I hate that his first response was, "that thing has to beep." That response just completely invalidates what we are saying and experiencing and just shuts us down from expressing ourselves and explaining our needs and asking for help and support.

You can share anything I write and yes, it is a public forum.

I remember you shared some with medical personnel. I'm glad to help you!

Thank you so much. And I am hoping that the efforts I make will ripple out to wherever you are and help you as well. Are you in the US? Since you are not familiar with Sam's Club I am wondering if you are in a different country.

I'm glad your placard is helping you, skibum. I shop at Sam's Club occasionally. The TVs and stereos are right inside the front entrance so I bypass them quickly and thankfully they don't have loud blaring music. I wear high fidelity earplugs in public because of such things being a possibility though.

I also now have FL-41 tinted glasses that filter out the blue light of fluorescent lights. I wear them all the time now. They calm me.

I started wearing the earplugs because I was in a home improvement store walking in an aisle and a worker had an empty wooden pallet standing up on its side. The worker purposely pushed the wooden pallet and it landed flat on the smooth concrete floor with the sound of a gunshot right in front of me. I have PTSD from several gunshot related incidents and I almost collapsed to the floor before feeling like I was stumbling out of the store without making my purchase so I could retreat to my vehicle. The sound level of that exacerbated my tinnitus for days afterward. I told myself that I would never again feel helpless in regard to loud sounds in public.

I hope Sam's works with you on this. I wouldn't personally want to check out at Customer Service because often those lines are long with returns which would defeat the purpose. Also, that area of the store seems very bright to me.

Thank you so much for responding Magna. I also wear ear defenders and ear plugs and sometimes both at the same time. The music at our Sam's Club is also right at the cash registers so I try to get past that quickly as well. But the pharmacy is right there as well as the café so if I need to be in line at any of those places, I am at very high risk. Anywhere else in the store is ok except that sometimes the refrigerators and freezers can be loud but I just have to deal with that because they can't turn them off. But coming into the store, leaving the store or standing in any line either at the register, the café, the pharmacy, the customer service desk, or the check at the exit can be sheer torture and dangerous to me even with ear defenders and ear plugs because the thumping bass frequencies are not stopped by them. Sometimes wearing them can make the low pitched bass frequencies worse because they block a lot of other sounds but those sounds still come through because they come in through the bones in the back of the skull. I am applying for a grant for $400 bose sound reducing ear phones that can also play white noise and that have 11 levels of sound reduction. I hope the grant people will agree to get them for me. My life is literally torture because of this problem and I am barely able to survive it. But I am really glad that the ear protection helps you. That is very good. But you should not have to be forced to wear them. There is no reason at all why any store cannot provide a few hours of quiet and sensory regulated shopping on a regular basis.

I'm so glad you spoke to your local Sam's club Skibum, that's very brave, and helpful to so many people.

I wear noise cancelling headphones whenever I go shopping, because as others have said, the constant barrage of noise is too much. I also recently got a parking placard because I struggle with parking lots too. I had a meltdown at Walmart a few weeks ago thanks to the noise and collapsed on the floor. I barely made it outside, then had to weave my way through the parking lot to find my car, which took longer than it should have because I'm forever forgetting where I parked, and in the meantime I was subjected to honking horns and crashing carts, while having to pay attention to make sure I didn't get run over. I used my placard for the first time today and it was amazing to be able to get straight in and out without all that anxiety and stress.

Thank you so much for sharing your story. I sent it to the Sam's Club lady as well. I just got to a meeting of one of the Autism groups in my community to discuss sensory issues