your workplace = pro bono daycare facility

[Midnight12]

GRRR! this makes me SO mad. I USED to work in a store that had instore kid watching. I say kid watching because it wasn't a day care. Just one half sized room right next to the bathroom. (Liability laws for the store made it so the room couldn't have a bathroom inside it but had to be as close to the bathroom as possible) and I was happy doing that job until they removed it. TO HECK with you K Signature! This also further pushes the theory that people should have to apply to have children just like you have to apply for a drivers license or have their kids taken away. (Supposedly a parent's most precious treasure is their child. They sure as heck don't act like it!)

[Rapscallion]

"Sorry, ma'am, but I'm really not interested in being your kid's surrogate mommy today. If you don't want to look after them, you shouldn't have had kids. Now take your crotch droppings elsewhere!"

I beg your pardon?

Children know no better than as they were taught by their parents. Please reserve your comments for them, not for insulting children who don't know any better.

Rapscallion

[blas]

I used to bitch on here a lot about the neighborhood kids who'd come to the gas station all the time and steal and be a general pain in the ass. They'd hang out outside, banging on the windows, running around the pumps. I didn't mean to put all my anger towards them, it was their worthless white trash parents who refused to watch them. They rarely, if ever, had shoes on or even jackets in the fall and winter.

Unfortunately, the gas station is situated by a busy road, and I just feared the day that one of them would get smacked by oncoming traffic. Their parents were totally worthless, so oblivious to the fact that their children were wandering around busy roads and gas stations.

[Midnight12]

Agreed with Rap, and also with blas87. There are kids that don't know better and are well behaved. then there are kids with apathetic thoughtless parents. Kids learn by being taught, copying what they see or...on their own which seems what those kids did. They learned that if they annoyed you it was funny to see you mad. Sorry blas87. But thats why I want more nanys to help GOOD parents raise their kids to be well mannered and behaved! (there's only one of me, STOP populating for a minute! LOL)

[Soulstealer]

What I'd like to see is a sign that reads :

Attention customers, we cannot legally watch your children.
Unattended children become property of the store and will be sold to the highest bidder.

The alternative would be:
Attention customers, we cannot legally watch your children.
We will call child services over any unattended children.

[chainedbarista]

that's part of the problem, as juwl stated; we're not legally certified for care, which is a big problem, but the big green apron is more about 'creating community' rather than keeping in mind that their staff is there to provide drinks and retail service, not babysitting for parents who are too lazy/stupid/uncaring/insert choice here to find proper care for their little 'angels' who are old enough to know better.

there's a boy's and girl's club not even four blocks from our store, which will provide certified care and supervision for a whopping fee of $15-25 per year for parents. imagine that; a small fee per year would provide what they're looking for, but it's just too hard to think and be responsible. why should they, when corporate allows this kind of crap to happen through asinine policies?

i have a fear that one of these brats will do something that will hurt themselves or damage items in the store, but the parents will insist it's OUR responsibility to ensure their behavior. trust me, they don't want my ensurance, ever; those kids will have to sit quietly and behave, something they don't do.

i was also a latchkey, but i was at home, not out and harrassing employees of x business.

amazing how attitudes of what's acceptable and what's not over the span of a few decades.

[daleduke17]

Attention customers, we cannot legally watch your children.
We will call child services over any unattended children.

If I ever got into an ownership capacity of a business, some variation of this sign would be going up, AND enforced.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

One good thing about working third shift is I don't have to spend my shift acting as crowd control/security when the kids from the nearby junior high swarm us on their half days.

And today happens to be one of them.

A couple months ago, they were unusually unruly, having shaving cream and silly string wars in front of the store, fighting, and harassing people who came to do their shopping. Some customers got mad and wrote letters to corporate.

[BaristaGirl]

Heh. This is kinda sad...

Back in the day, 'quality' time with my father was him handing me a $20 and dropping me off at Newbury Comics for 3-5 hours at a time. I was a good kid and I always spent almost all my cash there anyway, but after about 2 hours I was done shopping and I'd sit on the sidewalk outside waiting for him to come back. The nice folks who worked there got the hint after a while, and though they never called social services or confronted my father, they started peeking outside to check on me and make sure I eventually got home at all. Ahh, family. Parents who pull this crap need to be taught a very serious lesson, and if you can't have kids, then they should be taken away from you. Period.

[pyxee]

I used to bitch on here a lot about the neighborhood kids who'd come to the gas station all the time and steal and be a general pain in the ass. They'd hang out outside, banging on the windows, running around the pumps. I didn't mean to put all my anger towards them, it was their worthless white trash parents who refused to watch them. They rarely, if ever, had shoes on or even jackets in the fall and winter.

Unfortunately, the gas station is situated by a busy road, and I just feared the day that one of them would get smacked by oncoming traffic. Their parents were totally worthless, so oblivious to the fact that their children were wandering around busy roads and gas stations.

I had this exact same thing at one the stations I worked at. This group of 4 or 5 kids probably age 8 to maybe 12 would come in on their skate boards, and they would always try and ride them around the store. They would always steal stuff, and hassle the customers and workers, make huge messes etc. Finally the manager busted them stealing and the entire group was banned from the store.
Of course the father of the little ringleader came in to complain about it, saying that his son was a good boy and would never steal anything The kicker was the guy drove a new BMW and was wearing an expensive looking suit, so they could obviously afford some child care.

[Finduilas]

Unfortunately, the library is a really popular place for kids to go. A majority of the kids go in to do homework, study, or go on the computers, but a specific group made lots of trouble. They'd race around and make noise and break things.

It got so bad that they broke the wired glass in our outer door with a chair that they had dragged out of the main library.

We banned them, with the condition that if their parents came in to discuss their behaviour, they might be able to return. Some parents came in, but most did not.

We had some cement poured to anchor a few poles to hold a chain link fence to enclose our garbage and recycling corral, and the kids moved the poles. We caught them, and their parents had to pay to get it fixed.

We don't have trouble with them any more.

[blas]

My goodness. Idle hands sure are the Devil's play thing.

Bored children are also the Devil's play thing. I can't imagine being so bored and having nothing better to do than vandalize a store, remove poles, break windows, loiter for hours at BK, etc.

[Namrepus221]

I'm reminded of the Gord

http://www.actsofgord.com/Chronicles/chapter27.html

Only I'd skip the calling of the parent and just go right to calling child protective services and have them take the kids away from the store and potentially their parents.

[FlamingSickle]

Unfortunately, the library is a really popular place for kids to go. A majority of the kids go in to do homework, study, or go on the computers, but a specific group made lots of trouble. They'd race around and make noise and break things.

It got so bad that they broke the wired glass in our outer door with a chair that they had dragged out of the main library.

We banned them, with the condition that if their parents came in to discuss their behaviour, they might be able to return. Some parents came in, but most did not.

We had some cement poured to anchor a few poles to hold a chain link fence to enclose our garbage and recycling corral, and the kids moved the poles. We caught them, and their parents had to pay to get it fixed.

We don't have trouble with them any more.

It never got quite this bad, to the point of destruction, when I worked in a library a few years ago, but we'd constantly have high school and middle school kids coming to hang out in the evenings. Now, when I was young, I learned that the library was a quiet place to be and that talking was banned with the exception of whispers. These kids didn't quite seem to get that. They also tried, usually very unsuccessfully, to sneak in food, thinking we wouldn't hear the slight crinkle of a bag and notice them repeatedly sticking their hands under some poor book lying face-down and open on the table then bringing said hands to their mouths. To be fair, I guess they thought their talking would cover it, but I have rather good hearing. (It was fun surprising those kids with loud headphones I could easily identify over the surrounding din and ask them to turn their music down. Something about that tinny pitch just always bothered me more than the talking.)

Now that I work at a theatre, it's still the middle and high school kids that cause trouble. Their parents give them money and leave to pick them up sometime later. Just tonight we had a group of about twenty come in (most of whom weren't old enough to drive themselves), buy $10.25 tickets for various movies, then do nothing but hang around in the lobby after eating some cake that they managed to also get on the floor in the process. After they got bored with us, they went to other stores down the strip and wreaked havoc there. One would think that if they weren't going to see the movie they'd have kept the money and just done nothing still. Unfortunately, since they had tickets and weren't really harassing anyone, we couldn't kick them out, but I think they also knew that we were watching them.

[donruss]

Quote:
Quoth Marxfan View Post
"Sorry, ma'am, but I'm really not interested in being your kid's surrogate mommy today. If you don't want to look after them, you shouldn't have had kids. Now take your crotch droppings elsewhere!"
I beg your pardon?

Children know no better than as they were taught by their parents. Please reserve your comments for them, not for insulting children who don't know any better.

Rapscallion

I believe that they were hypothetically saying this to said adult, not the child.