I had an interesting dealing with JRP in Baltimore today. Or more appropriately, my daughter did, via my granddaughter. Allow me to give a small back story.
My 4-year old granddaughter (well, she'll be 4 on Monday) has autism. Many of you may know about or know someone with autism. Many of you may not. My granddaughter has high-functioning autism. She is borderline Asperger's Syndrome. When she came into the JRP office in downtown Baltimore, she was holding her two favorite toys, a Dora and a Boots. She began running around, rolling around on the floor, and "screaming". I put that in quotes because it's not screaming in the aspect that you may think of. For her, screaming can be caused by a high level of excitement, frustration, pain, etc. My daughter's immediate dealing with the director (I think?) was for him to say "This isn't going to work." He said this immediately after finding out that my granddaughter is autistic.
My daughter came home, imaginable irate. She left without even having the audition done. When we found out what had occurred, my son-in-law, my wife and I immediately got ourselves together, armed with some information about autism, and proceeded to go downtown to, umm, "speak" to the "good folks" at JRP. Mind you, my family and I are VERY low income. It financially hurt my daughter to purchase the dres and shoes for the audition. It financially hurt me to use the gas to travel downtown and pay the parking rate. But my granddaughter had been treated prejudicially. So we went.
I went into suite 1802, where the JRP ofices were located, and the receptionist that greeted me couldn't have been older than 20 or 21. I am old enough to be her father. She then introduced me to the man who my daughter had dealt with earlier. This gentleman barely had a command of the english language, as he was from Russia. He gave his name, but I am not going to state it. He invited the three of us into his office, and then left us to sit for 5 minutes, which turned into more like 20 or 30 minutes. He did manage to return briefly, so as to hand us a sales brochure.
After he returned, I noticed that he was visibly nervous. He continually played with a paperclip. Keep in mind, my son-in-law stands 5'7" 230#, and I'm 6' 205#. He tried several times to make small talk with us, but we kept him on topic.
At this point, you're probably wondering where my story has to do with the rip-off scam of RJP. We weren't sucked in, because my daughter was put-off by the employee. I'll end with two things:
1) Any employee of the company who responds, if hey are still curently employed by RJP, is going to tell you how fabulous the organization is.
2) If you have a child with special needs, don't waste your time. They'll treat you like dirt, because sereotypically speaking, rich people (or at least people who can afford this crap) don't have children with disablilties.
0 comments