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Yesterday evening I was running the grocery floor at the Store. I had just finished covering the front end lead's lunch and was on my way to do a cardboard pull when I stopped to chat with the self-checkout attendant. Her and I have both been at the Store since it opened nearly 5 1/2 years ago, and we love to trade "war stories". I'm telling her about an encounter with a customer I had the day before, which went something like this;
C: Where are the baked beans?
Me: Aisle 7.
C: Where's that?
Me:
I was jokingly describing to her how I might have given that person directions. "Alright, you're gonna wanna go down that way, you're gonna see aisle 5, after that you'll see aisle 6, now if you get to aisle 10 you gone too far and you're gonna wanna make a U at aisle 11..." We have a laugh, and she says that it's like we have to babysit the customers.
Just as I'm getting ready to get back to work, a woman walks up to where we're standing. She's pushing a cart full of bagged-up groceries, with a very young child (18-24 months or so) sitting in the seat. She asks if she can leave her cart there because she forgot to buy something and she wants to go back and get it. Myself and the attendant both tell her that's OK, and she parks her cart off to the side and starts to walk back into the store. With her toddler still sitting in the cart.
I shout at her to please not leave her child unattended because we can't be responsible for watching him. And she then turns around as if the thought hadn't occurred to her and picks him up and takes him with her.
I'm not a parent. But if I were, I imagine that I wouldn't trust the care of my child to anyone who I didn't know like a brother and trust implicitly. I certainly wouldn't expect an hourly laborer at a supermarket with that duty - it's not something we're trained to do, it's not something we expect our employees to be legally responsible for, and it's not something we have labor-hours to spare for.
It is, however, ironic that while the attendant and I were talking jokingly about how we had to babysit our customers, that we were asked to literally babysit our customers.
C: Where are the baked beans?
Me: Aisle 7.
C: Where's that?
Me:
I was jokingly describing to her how I might have given that person directions. "Alright, you're gonna wanna go down that way, you're gonna see aisle 5, after that you'll see aisle 6, now if you get to aisle 10 you gone too far and you're gonna wanna make a U at aisle 11..." We have a laugh, and she says that it's like we have to babysit the customers.
Just as I'm getting ready to get back to work, a woman walks up to where we're standing. She's pushing a cart full of bagged-up groceries, with a very young child (18-24 months or so) sitting in the seat. She asks if she can leave her cart there because she forgot to buy something and she wants to go back and get it. Myself and the attendant both tell her that's OK, and she parks her cart off to the side and starts to walk back into the store. With her toddler still sitting in the cart.
I shout at her to please not leave her child unattended because we can't be responsible for watching him. And she then turns around as if the thought hadn't occurred to her and picks him up and takes him with her.
I'm not a parent. But if I were, I imagine that I wouldn't trust the care of my child to anyone who I didn't know like a brother and trust implicitly. I certainly wouldn't expect an hourly laborer at a supermarket with that duty - it's not something we're trained to do, it's not something we expect our employees to be legally responsible for, and it's not something we have labor-hours to spare for.
It is, however, ironic that while the attendant and I were talking jokingly about how we had to babysit our customers, that we were asked to literally babysit our customers.
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