Melbourne café apologises over wheelchair joke

A Melbourne cafe has apologised after customers complained by a joke written outside the shop that mocked disabled people.

Known for writing puns and jokes on a sign outside the store and uploading them to Facebook, Seddon Deadly Sins café’s latest joke didn’t go down well with punters. 

“My girlfriend broke up with me, so I stole her wheelchair,” the sign read.

“Guess who came crawling back.” 

People took to social media to call the café out, saying it should be ashamed of itself. 

”Any cafe that thinks jokes about abuse and violence and against disabled people is NOT a community cafe worth supporting,” one person wrote. 

The cafe’s co-owner, Chris Gooden, initially dismissed it as a “silly pun” but then did a u-turn and deleted the post along with issuing an apology. 

“Today I made the mistake of making light of something that I had not considered was a brutal reality for some people,” the post read.

“Colleen Hartland shared a report with me that highlighted domestic violence against people with disabilities. I’m ashamed that it took this for me to learn about this abuse.

“I apologise for my ignorance and any offence that it has caused. Regardless of the original intent, I should have known better.”

Sheridan Randall, 7th March 2019