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I work at a video games store in a strip mall that shares a parking lot with a Costco.
It's not uncommon at all for parents to drop their kids off with us while they go shop at the Costco. Usually the brats hang out with us for a half an hour or so, play our demos, don't usually buy anything and leave when the parent comes back to pick them up. Now I don't usually do things any differently (i.e. monitor them more closely) just because there are young kids in my store. That's not my job.
So last week these two young boys (around 5 and 10 I'd guess) came in unaccompanied and proceeded to browse the games for well over 20 minutes. They weren't being disruptive or anything (although they did kind of make a mess of our game boy display). If other customers came in, I turned my attention to them and pretty much ignored the kids. At some point the younger boy left the store. There are other stores in the strip mall and I figured the parent must be in one of them so he went back to be with his mom or dad.
A few minutes later the mom comes in, without the child to pick up her boys.
She asks the older one where his brother his and he says he didn't know. So she then asks me if I know. I tell her he left the store but I'm not sure where exactly he went.
She then gives me la ook of disbelief and says "Well, weren't you watching them?" I reply that I wasn't paying too close attention to them because I had other customers and job duties to attend to. Her response: "Well that's terrible you should be keeping an eye on the kids that come in here."
Me: "I'm sorry miss, that's not my job. If you don't want the kids to take off, my advice would be to keep them with you at all times. I think your son is probably at one of the other stores in this plaza."
So she leaves in a huff and comes back a little while later with both her sons and asks to speak to the manager (here we go...). She tells the manager that I was rude to her and I have no business telling her how to parent and I shouldn't have let her kid leave the store. The manager tells her the same thing I did: "It's not OUR job to babysit YOUR kids" (emphasis added by me).
She replies: "well you just lost my business" and storms out. The funny thing is that neither her or her kids had ever bought anything from our store. How can we lose business that we never had?
I have many job duties, babysitting is not one of them. If you can't be bothered to look after your own kids, don't expect me to do it.
Some people!
It's not uncommon at all for parents to drop their kids off with us while they go shop at the Costco. Usually the brats hang out with us for a half an hour or so, play our demos, don't usually buy anything and leave when the parent comes back to pick them up. Now I don't usually do things any differently (i.e. monitor them more closely) just because there are young kids in my store. That's not my job.
So last week these two young boys (around 5 and 10 I'd guess) came in unaccompanied and proceeded to browse the games for well over 20 minutes. They weren't being disruptive or anything (although they did kind of make a mess of our game boy display). If other customers came in, I turned my attention to them and pretty much ignored the kids. At some point the younger boy left the store. There are other stores in the strip mall and I figured the parent must be in one of them so he went back to be with his mom or dad.
A few minutes later the mom comes in, without the child to pick up her boys.
She asks the older one where his brother his and he says he didn't know. So she then asks me if I know. I tell her he left the store but I'm not sure where exactly he went.
She then gives me la ook of disbelief and says "Well, weren't you watching them?" I reply that I wasn't paying too close attention to them because I had other customers and job duties to attend to. Her response: "Well that's terrible you should be keeping an eye on the kids that come in here."
Me: "I'm sorry miss, that's not my job. If you don't want the kids to take off, my advice would be to keep them with you at all times. I think your son is probably at one of the other stores in this plaza."
So she leaves in a huff and comes back a little while later with both her sons and asks to speak to the manager (here we go...). She tells the manager that I was rude to her and I have no business telling her how to parent and I shouldn't have let her kid leave the store. The manager tells her the same thing I did: "It's not OUR job to babysit YOUR kids" (emphasis added by me).
She replies: "well you just lost my business" and storms out. The funny thing is that neither her or her kids had ever bought anything from our store. How can we lose business that we never had?
I have many job duties, babysitting is not one of them. If you can't be bothered to look after your own kids, don't expect me to do it.
Some people!
Awesome story!
idiot has been blessed with children who she obviously does not want to take responsibility for and meanwhile all I want is to have children but I can't due to medical complications.
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