How Popeyes’ Emotional Support Chicken Sparked a Big Emotional Reaction (aka I Yam What I Yam)
Three weeks ago I was a person who harshly judged vest-sporting “support dogs” I saw in airports, malls, and restaurants. Three weeks ago I put the phrase “support dog” in quotes because I thought it was a sham; I thought it was radically inconsiderate to flight attendants, servers, and fellow patrons to take advantage of the legal restrictions around the Americans with Disabilities Act to smuggle one’s pup into previously human-only public spaces.
Three weeks ago, I would have seen a dog in one of these places and I’d look closely to discern whether the person holding the end of the leash looked blind. If so, I’d let my judgment go: blindness was a “legit” reason for a service dog. Three weeks ago.
This morning I saw on social media a reference to a new Popeyes Fried Chicken campaign marketing a new carrying case for fried chicken meals. The cardboard case is shaped like a chicken with a trusty handle and features a graphic of a vest emblazoned with the phrase “Emotional Support Chicken.” The story got immediate traction on all the media outlets and with all the thought leaders who now give things immediate traction.
Three weeks ago I would have found this story hilarious. But just under three weeks ago I had a seizure in my sleep. Mercifully my partner was with me, phoned 911, and I landed in the ICU for three days. I remember almost nothing from those days.
Two weeks ago I restarted my life as a person who once had a seizure. I started anti-seizure medication, and I learned about this thing called a “nap.” Thankfully, I received decent reports from some brain scans, a “normal” EEG while medicated, and a green light to start working (but not driving for another three months). A friend sent me a note about a seizure-alert application for the Apple Watch. I bought an Apple Watch because (also thankfully) I can, and I ran the app. I learned that the watch with the high-battery-sapping app runs for about five hours, not sufficient to cover a full night’s sleep for me alone in a hotel on a work trip. I returned the watch.
I became comfortable through experience and the normal EEG with the idea that I would not have seizures so long as I was on the anti-seizure medication. I wondered about other options in the event I could eventually try life off this medication. I could hire an assistant to travel with me for work. Or…I could consider using a service dog.
Oh hell. I would be one of those people that three weeks ago I raked over the coals with my judgments: A regular, healthy-looking person walking through an airport with a happy, adorable dog (yes, I would choose an adorable one, of course I would) in a service vest. I would know that this dog could help me during a sola night in a random urban Marriott, and you would imagine I was a selfish, dog-obsessed woman selfishly taking advantage of a loophole to keep my dog within six feet of me no matter where I went.
So today, when I saw that Popeyes campaign, my quick, reactive smile was replaced immediately by tears. Not self-pity. Tears of shame at how my global judgment about service dogs over the years inevitably had snagged in its net many people who truly needed support animals for their personal safety.
So today I am reminded of the Conscious Leadership commitment to consider that the opposite of my story might be as true or truer than my story. I am letting myself off the hook because we all have our judgments. This is simply an invitation for me to pause on my next really damning judgment to wonder how other perspectives might be valid. About whom might my sweeping judgment be overstated or flat wrong? Whom might my judgment be missing?
A long, long time ago I had my first and only op-ed published in the Washington Post (“Oh, Say, Can’t You See A Joke?”). On April 1 1996, Taco Bell ran national (sardonic) ads to share that the restaurant chain had become the official sponsor of the Liberty Bell, declaring it the “Taco Liberty Bell.” I thought this move hysterical. Lots of other people freaked out. I freaked out about the people who freaked out, judging them as humorless.
I am feeling the other edge of this kind of reaction now. I don’t honestly care who eats Popeyes. It’s probably not the best food choice for health reasons, but I can’t judge the company harshly for this new packaging move. It is funny, and it is also painful. I can live with both of those poles being true.
