Story of woman who screamed at grocery store employee with Asperger's goes viral with support

CLAY, N.Y. — Thousands of people are showing their support for a grocery store employee in Central New York who suffers from Asperger's syndrome, after learning that a woman screamed at him for working too slowly when going through his checkout line over the weekend.

Chris Tuttle has worked at the Wegmans grocery store in Clay, N.Y. for seven years. On Saturday, a woman went through his checkout line and yelled at Tuttle for moving too slowly.

"Then in the middle of her transaction, left to complain loudly to a manager, came back to his line and he was so shaken, dropped a candle she bought on the ground and it shattered," Tuttle's sister, Jamie Tuttle-Virkler, wrote in a post about the incident on Facebook.

Because of his Asperger's, Tuttle takes it to heart and has trouble moving on when he experiences something like what happened this weekend. Asperger's is characterized by some of the same features as autism, including difficulties with social interactions, according to the U.S. Autism and Asperger Association. In Tuttle's case, he has difficulty moving on after an experience like the one over the weekend.

"To hear him tell the story, your heart will break," Virkler wrote. "He doesn't understand why someone would be so nasty to him and for him, he takes it personal."

Jamie Tuttle-Virkler's Facebook post went viral with thousands of messages of support.

Read more about this story from Syracuse.com here.

WSBTV