Rant about stupid parents...

[Alexia Marzullo]

So, I work at a home good store and now that it is summer parents have been bring their kids into the store with them during the day. We are not a kid friendly store, we have a minuscule section of toys, that’s about it.

Some parents let their kids plop down (or even jump, yes – I’ve seen it) on the beds, play with all the display appliances and pretty much run around the store without any supervision. This annoys me to no end, but what can you do? When we tried to tell a couple of sisters that they could not jump on the beds because they were not very sturdy, the mother defended them claiming “they were just testing it out.” How do you test out a bed that we don’t even sell? We don’t have any mattresses for sale in the store, display purposes only. Though, most parents do make their children get off the bed if we say something to them about it.

So, that stuff is all just agitating… but the one thing that really gets to me is when mothers let their little, tiny children wonder off on their own. This mother today had a little boy, he was no more than three, I would guess about two was standing by himself in our toy section and his mother was calling to him from two or three rooms down. Just calling to him, he was not answering. He was completely out of her sight and she just kept shopping and looking around. Finally, after about 10 minutes of her looking around the comforter room she went to find the little boy and brought him over.
Then he stayed with her for a little bit, but then when she moved onto the sheets he took to wondering different isles. She just called to him and nothing. No noise from him at all. She finally found him again and then they moved out of my department.

I do not live in an area with a lot of crime and I know it is not a kids store so their might not be prowlers lurking around, but anything can happen! If a sicko happens to be in the store at the time, he could take advantage of that situation easily. I mean, first off if my child was that young – he or she would not be out of my sight. But then to call him and wait for 10 minutes without any response?! I would be freaking out. I know he was young, but he knew his name and he knew how to say certain words, like his mothers name.

I was trying to keep an eye on the kid while they were in my section, but not every employee is going to be that nice or caring. It just sucks when parents seem so apathetic to their children. Gah! It pisses me off so much!
/rant

[Darth Fernal]

Nice rant

And I know it's just a rant and I don't want to ruin it, but I partially disagree as well as partially agree. Some parents really do need to start taking the raising of their child seriously, and letting a 3-year old just wander around a store that sells appliances that are potentially dangerous around unsupervised children is just irresponsible.

But overall, just as some parents don't take parenting seriously enough, some parents are just too overbearing. I should know, because my parents were like that. I think by the time you're 3, you should have some level of independence. Sometimes children are weened off of their spoiled brat ways too late.

[Alexia Marzullo]

Thanks, tehehe.

I know that parents can be too overbearing, but if you want to give them some independence can't you let them wonder the same room you are in atleast? Not on the otherside of the store...

[Darth Fernal]

i think we should leave each of our toddlers on top of a mountain for a week to fight off wolves and stuff. We will begin a new Sparta!

[Morgan Evanar]

Cougars and coyotes used to take care of people like that

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

I don't care what anyone says; the Spartans were on to something.

[Jedieb]

My wife and I were at the mall with our 3 wolverines the other day. As we were entering the store we noticed that a young girl, about 10, was sitting in a car by herself. Now, this is the kind of thing that sets my wife off. She's the kind of mother that has a set of divorce papers ready to be issued if I ever enter a store and leave one of our kids in the car for even a minute. We were shopping with my parents who were visiting from Florida. So we're waiting in the car while my mother finishes trying on some dresses. (That's a horror story for another thread.) The waiting stretches out for around a half hour. During this time we notice that the young girl's grandmother came back out, put the girl back in her car and gone back into the mall to do some shopping. (She'd gotten out and wandered around a bit because she was bored.) Well, the minutes are ticking by and the girl is just sitting there in the car. My wife is going nuts and eventually goes into the store to alert mall security. The girl eventually gets out of the car and starts walking and walking and walking... She turns the corner and she's gone. I go into the store, not to grab a mall cop, but to beg my parents to hurry up. When I get back out the grandmother is sitting in her car crying to police officer. No doubt she's giving the cop a fairy tale about how she just ran in for a minute and her precious just took off. I get my parents in the car and have to almost physically restrain my wife from running over to the cop and telling him the woman had practically abandoned the girl in the parking lot for over half an hour. We left and really had no idea how the situation resolved itself. I'm sure the cops eventually found the girl. Mall security was useless, they didn't even get out there until 20 minutes after my wife reported it. (I actually suspect my wife called the cops while I was in the store getting my parents, but I haven't pressed her.) The whole episode is just another example of idiotic adults who really aren't fit to handle kids.

Kids = WORK. Don't want to do the work, then DON'T have them. A message brought to you by Exhausted Parents of America.

[Rhianna]

^ what he said!

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

Eb, your wife is now one of my heroes. You should've let her talk to the cop though; what that lady did was inexcusable.

[Mandy with an I]

Eb, your wife is now one of my heroes. You should've let her talk to the cop though; what that lady did was inexcusable.

^I totally agree.

I work in a convenience store, and I have parents who let their kids run around all the time while they go and buy things. We had a kid (who still comes into the store - his parents are regulars) who would take a marker and write his name all over the notebooks The two things that tick me off most though, are Wheelies (those shoes with rollerblade wheels on them -- yes, glide through the store, crash and then make ME clean up the mess), and our shopping carts, that all children find adorable and have to push around the store then leave in the aisle because they don't have the sense to put them back.


I think all parents should do what my mum did, and fill their childrens' heads with lies about getting sent away to some slave labor camp in the middle of nowhere with no chance of escape

[Wyl Staedtler]

Kids = WORK. Don't want to do the work, then DON'T have them. A message brought to you by Exhausted Parents of America.

Amen. We get a lot of hooligans in our neighborhood and it's simply because these kids never recieve active parenting. I don't know why their mums and dads don't equate their own behavior to their child's development, or how they can not care enough to step up. It's very sad.

I think all parents should do what my mum did, and fill their childrens' heads with lies about getting sent away to some slave labor camp in the middle of nowhere with no chance of escape

Oh so mean.

[Mandy with an I]

It's true though! Those stories about being sent to Father Bakers' farm worked wonders . I think too many parents want to be their kids best buddy, and don't want to be overly strict. Yeah, when your kids are older, that works, but anyone under the age of 16 should have parents, not "adult friends".

[Mr. Feint]

Such is the world of retail. I've only been working retail for little over a week now, but I can already agree with much of what you people are saying. I personally have not had much problems with little children or irresponsible mothers. My problems stave more from children between the ages of five and ten, who run rampant through our toy section like a bunch of banshees. Sometimes I wonder if they're have a competition to see who can be the loudest. Most of the time kids come in with a parents, who is at least around the toy section while they're in it, and these children are so much more acceptible then the ones that run around on their own. The other day we can a couple of ten-ish year olds who were riding around on toddler bycicles, running into stuff, and falling off. I just wanted to scream at them, make them got off the bikes, put them back, and get the hell out of the store. Sadly, I am not allowed to do such, so I just ignored them. Wasn't even my section either. I even had a few costumers that told me I should do something about them. But, as I said, I can't do anything about it. I can't touch a costumer, so I can't pull them off, and I'm sure as hell that those kids wouldn't listen to me if I told them to get off the bikes. They would ride right past me without a care in the world.

Beyond that experience, my life in retail has been alright so far. My only peeve is the costumers that come in and make us search the whole store for an item that they latter comment on saying that we should have because they bought it at Home Depot. We're Fred Meyers, not Home Depot. And of course, the oh-so-popular "Do you work here?". Yes, I have the shirt, I'm wearing slacks, I have a name tag, and I look like everyone else that works here. Yes, I work here. That's not so bad. I think they just ask because they don't want to address someone who possibly may not work there.

I really like the smart costumers that, when you go over to help them, first ask if you work in the section they're standing in. So smarts, because most of the time I get called over to sections I have never worked and thus don't know where anything is. But, I can't just say no, so I help them out regardless.

I just wish them costumers could fold them towels back the way they found them *shakes fist*

[Alexia Marzullo]

I just wish them costumers could fold them towels back the way they found them *shakes fist*

That's a joke... they never will and even if they *try* to fold them back properly, it's probably going to be wrong and you have to re-do it anyway...

the way that we fold towels at work is so bizarre, I wouldn't know how to refold them even if I wanted to... heck, I still have problems folding some of the bigger towels we have - crazy oversized towels

It's just so sad that good parenting is declining, but I have to get used to it though - I plan on being a teacher

When I was ten, I would not have been allowed to be in Wal Mart by myself, though I probably was allowed to wonder off on my own a little, but I would not have played with the toys or ride the bikes, nor would I have wanted to because I knew if I was caught what would happen

[Jaime Tomahawk]

A true fact -

Everyone will think your a stupid parent if you have children at some point in your life. Especially single people like me, because children are closer to the Antichrist than bundles of joy and people who breed are weird and should be approached with extreme caution, a bit like nitro should approach glycerine with a great deal of care.

And yes, if your pride and joy puts ice cream over my car, that justifies homicide. And get your groin droppings off my lawn while I'm on about it, what's wrong with YOUR lawn?

I love being a grumpy bastard

[Kat Kariena]

We have simmilar problems where I work... I work in a small electronics store, we had this one kid come in and he was touching and playing with *EVERYTHING* while his father was on our internet center for an hour. Seriously... the blasted kid even broke an antenna on one of our few RC cars. Got to the point where one of the guys out back disconnected our internet and the father started paying attention to the boy long enough to say it was time to leave.

Honestly, I would never have been able to get away with such behavior. My mother taught me from a *VERY* young age that you are quiet, you stay with mom or dad, and you don't touch anything while in the store. Then again, my mother also taught me to sit still in the car so I didn't have a booster seat either.

Then again... in public my mother had a huge caribeaner full of keys the size of my dad's fist and two very long keychain loop thingie I made for her that she had no problems wacking us with in public if we misbehaived After that it was the "Attitude Stick" that wonderful lovely little board half an inch tall, two or three inches wide and about a foot or foot and a half long that we'd get smacked on the butt with if we acted out.

[Wyl Staedtler]

You can't spank kids anymore, it's abuse.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

I don't know about anyone else, but I had spoons and spatulas broken on my hiney.

[Mr. Feint]

I don't know about anyone else, but I had spoons and spatulas broken on my hiney.

Aye. When I was a child my mother used the kitchen spoons and spatulas to spank me when I misbehaved, and then she moved up to using this leather "Spanker" thingy that worked ten times more and hurt like hell. The whereabouts of that spanker are unknown. It just disappeared one day. My guess is one of my siblings took it and threw it away. We returned to spoons and then, after I was passed the spanking age, my parents moved up to thin plastic tubing that got a good snap on them. Nothing compared to the leather spanker, but pretty dark good, 'cept we lost them all. Nowadays, I just sent my siblings to their rooms when they act up. Violence not needed.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

I never got anything beyond spoon, spatula, or a flat palm.

Another thing; it all depended on the parent doing the spanking. Mom was quick and nasty, plus this was back when she had long fingernails, and those things stung like the dickens. Now, Dad was far more scary in terms of sheer power. He packed a dandy whallop.

Course trying to find the lesser evil between those two was impossible, and so it ultimately didn't matter which one spanked me.