We are NOT Baby Sitters!

[taxguykarl]

For anyone who's forgotten this thread: http://www.customerssuck.com/board/s...ad.php?t=39928

I have a quick refresher. No nasty nicknames for children. Lady J'ssem made a nice thread, so everyone play nice.

Duly noted. Nonetheless, I was being quite tactful for those kids in my post...you had to be there and see it to believe it. Still, rules are rules, so I'll park my thesaurus when posting about misbehaving kids from now on.

[AyreBiskits]

precious snowflake isn't nasty, is it?

[Dips]

Trust me folks nobody has crossed that line in this thread yet. We just want to be sure it stays that way so we don't have to close it.

If anyone is wondering what I'm talking about you can check out this discussion thread:

http://www.customerssuck.com/board/s...ad.php?t=39928

[Broomjockey]

Duly noted.

Actually, no one'd crossed the line yet (trust me, if any one had, I'd have either edited it, or quoted the offending material), so it was just a "hey, this might be an issue, so remember now before I have to give a boot to the shins." And we're still good, so I guess I don't need *these* : puts away steel-toed boots:

[jedimaster91]

We have parents who will leave their kids at the library all day so they don't have to deal with the little heathens. Frankly, I'm shocked there haven't been any kids snatched from here because this is the downtown branch and we have some real creeps who hang out here.

[Peppergirl]

and a later reprimand from the CSM the lady complained to.

Ah yes, the classic 'no win' situation. Alternatively, if you had let the kids tear up the merchandise (thus losing the store money), the CSM probably would have bitched you out for *that* too.

Allow me, please -

[WageSlaveofDoom]

Where was it written that you had to let them listen to your PSP? What would have happened if one of them had broken it or decided that it was *theirs*?

That actually happened to a friend of mine. We worked at a now-bankrupt "educational" toy store and parents left their children there all the time.
She had a speaker attachment on her ipod shuffle, and would often leave it in the break room for all of us to enjoy. During an increasingly frustrating weekend, she brought it out and offered to let a few kids listen to it if they were good and read in the corner. No sooner did she show it than a kid snatched it up and ran out of the store, shouting "Mommy! Mommy! Look what the nice lady gave me!"
The kicker? Mom was headed into the store to pick up junior and thought it was cute that her child got a present for being there, and refused to believe that my co-worker did not give her child* a $100 music player when they were confronted at the door. Being the stupidly nice girl she is, my co-worker let mom and brat leave so we could close up. My manager, on the other hand, took down her license plate number as they left and called hubby to report a stolen item. Yep. She married a cop. That part was actually pretty awesome.

The best was when he would sometimes show up, lights flashing, and announce in the store that they were doing an emergency check and could all the parents and kids come to the front of the store? Needless to say there was almost always one or two kids who couldn't find their parents, and they got to hang out with the cool officer until their parents ran to the store, bags in hand, crying bloody murder because they saw the cop car outside. Once I was on a cigarette break and an abandoner asked why the cop was there. I said "Dunno. I think someone's kid was abducted..."

Last week I was in a big blue box store and heard the worker on the loudspeaker refer someone to the kiddie playground to "pick up your prize... all three of them..." He was charming and polite until that last bit, when he let the exhaustion show. Everyone around me laughed, except a lady who blushed and shuffled off... probably to claim her prizes...

* Mods are right, it doesn't serve to call names, but that kid was beyond evil...

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Holy, CRAP you guys....

Okay, this just in. I just got back from our home school day a little while ago.

Remember the lady I told you all came in last week and tried to get us to watch her kid?

She came back today. Me, a twelve year old, and my four year old were sitting around waiting for the rest of our respective classes to show up. The older girl was reading to my kid and here comes the lady with her kid again. She goes
"Oh, is this still the home school class?"

I'm over there thinking, oh, do you mean is the answer different from what it was last week? I said to her, "Yeah, look, I'm sorry, but we can't let him stay in here, this is not a child care thing." I was nice about it, but come on, we have had this conversation already. The twelve year old even piped up, saying, correctly, "we probably won't even be in this room much longer, we'll probably move when others arrive."

I should also mention that the whole time, her kid was tearing around the room like a holy terror, ignoring all her attempts to control him.

Oh, yeah, sign me up for watching that kid, right?

So she takes her kid and unhappily leaves, sighing "Oh, well, okay, c'mon Junior, we can't stay here."

That's not even the punch line. This is the punch line:

She came back not ten minutes later and we had the same conversation all over again.

The twelve year old told me (in the period between request number one and request number two) that last week, heard that same lady in the parking lot, grousing to another lady about something and the words "home school group" were involved.

Geeeeeze.

[Amina516]

I just can NOT wrap my head around trusting your own children with complete strangers! I get that maybe parents need a break sometimes but come on!

When we're in a store, if my 9 and 4 yr old arent within my sights theyre TOO far..and they know it.

[Ironclad Alibi]

She had a speaker attachment on her ipod shuffle, and would often leave it in the break room for all of us to enjoy. During an increasingly frustrating weekend, she brought it out and offered to let a few kids listen to it if they were good and read in the corner. No sooner did she show it than a kid snatched it up and ran out of the store, shouting "Mommy! Mommy! Look what the nice lady gave me!"
The kicker? Mom was headed into the store to pick up junior and thought it was cute that her child got a present for being there, and refused to believe that my co-worker did not give her child* a $100 music player when they were confronted at the door. Being the stupidly nice girl she is, my co-worker let mom and brat leave so we could close up. My manager, on the other hand, took down her license plate number as they left and called hubby to report a stolen item. Yep. She married a cop. That part was actually pretty awesome.

Do you know if she got her ipod back?

[MadMike]

The next day the woman came in screaming about how we had no right to call the police, because now the father could use that against her in the custody battle they were currently in.

And it sounds like she proved that she should lose the case.

I've said this before, and I'll say this again. What the fuck is wrong with people? Do they not read the news? How many kids get snatched away or wander off and get hurt or killed when the "parents" look away for just a moment? And then we have these ones that leave the kids completely unattended for hours at a time!

It isn't customers that suck, it's people.

Sometimes the kids would wander off and the parents would raise holy hell with the store for 'not watching my children!'

Call me stupid, but I always thought that was the parents' job.

[Cat]

The child left to its own story I can thing of is when I worked at the book store.

Mom left the kid in the children's section while she shopped and the kid proceeded to eat the books. After some time, my manager noticed this, and called to me, " Hey Cat, look at that HUGE mess in the kids section. Sorry, you're gonna have to clean it."

Mom came over, straightened up the non eaten books, grabbed the kid, and left. I don't remember what she did with the chewed ones, I just know she didn't pay for them.

*sigh*

[Andara Bledin]

How many kids get snatched away or wander off and get hurt or killed when the "parents" look away for just a moment?

Actually, the whole "stranger danger" thing is usually blown massively out of proportion. Your kid is more likely to be struck by lightning than kidnapped by a stranger. Now, the chances of being kidnapped by someone they know is much higher.

However, the chances they'll get hurt while they're not being looked after are nothing quite so rare, so it's still a very bad idea to wander off and leave your kids to their own devices hoping some random individual will care more than you do.

^-.-^

[ih8zombies]

I think that is one of my biggest pet peeves!

About 3 years ago during the Christmas rush while I was working in a children's teddy bear store I had this happen to me. I noticed a baby (could walk but couldn't talk, but not quite a toddler) wandering around the store in his footy pajamas with no parents in sight. I followed this kid around the store for TWENTY minutes, keeping him from crawling on things, putting things in his mouth, and from wandering out of the store and into the mall. You would think that anywhere in this time frame I would be able to figure out who the kids parents were, but I had no idea! I was starting to panic, wondering if somebody had lost this baby when the two parents come up with their other daughter talking about how it was her birthday and her special day. They picked the baby up and left the store. I guess they figured that because it was a children's store it was my responsibility to watch their BABY.

[Red_Dazes]

First off! WELCOME!


second. Since I used to work RIGHT next to the toy department at my store... I had TONS of people who thought it would be okay to leave Jr. to play in the toys since "oh well you are stuck here anyway!" My standard line for parents like that was "Sir/Ma'am. It is company policy that children stay with their parents at all times for safety reasons." If this didn't work I would immediately call management and send them to fix the problem... or I would get right down to the kids level and ask "Where is your mommy?" "Oh! Okay. Well I need you to go stay with her okay? If you want to look around your mommy has to come with you."

You would be amazed how well that last one works... MOST kids ((I'm excluding those who were brought up as the "can do no wrong center of the universe" kind)) listen very well to older people who work at the store.