Thursday, June 21, 2012

If today's kids are our future...

I'm cashing in my bonds.


Since I'm home today, and since it's nearly 100 degrees, I took Murphy to the river to cool him off. On the way, I stopped at the local 7-11 to get a cup of coffee.

While standing in line, I suddenly heard a crunching sound behind me. Then another. I turned and saw the 4-5 year old son of this huge woman in line. He was standing in front of a shelf filed with bags of potato chips and he was going down the row, punching each bag and breaking all of the chips inside. Instinctively, I yelled at him to knock that off. Surprised, he stopped and stared at me. His mom turned and saw what he was doing, too, but rather than scold him, she called him over to her, gave me a nasty look, then made faces at him while ordering him a hot dog. She made no offer to buy the 4 or 5 bags of chips that he'd obviously smashed, nor did she correct him. Had that been me with MY parents, I'd have gotten my butt lit up and been marched out of the store, and there certainly wouldn't have been a hot dog coming. The chips would have come too, and my allowance would have been deducted the full amount. Yeah, my folks were mean, but I learned to respect other people's stuff at a young age.

This kid? He apparently learned that he can do whatever he wants.

And I wasn't impressed at all with the clerk at the 7-11, who didn't say a thing to the woman even though she saw it all too. She also made no effort to take those ruined chip bags off the shelf after this brat and it's mom left. Note to self: don't ever buy chips there again.

I guess that discipline and respect are things from another age. I feel old now. I think that I'll have some tea and go take a nap until the Lawrence Welk Show comes on.

7 comments:

  1. Anonymous3:15 PM

    Can't speak as to why the clerk didn't remove the damaged chips, but as a fellow "customer service" employee, I can tell you why she didn't scold the kid or Big Mamma: she's not allowed to.

    It's sad, but in today's world, if a clerk scolds any misbehaving customer, let alone a child, odds are the clerk will be written up or (more likely) fired for "harassing the customer."

    -Raptor

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  2. Raptor's got a point. Plus, from the retail side of things, they'll just write those bags off as "damaged" (if they even bother...fluff up the bag a bit, and nobody will ever notice) and "destroy" them on their break. Its cheaper to let the little punk just go away.

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  3. There are still good parents out there, but they are too smart to waste their money at 7-11 where the mark-up is utterly ridiculous. Please take that into consideration.

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  4. As a recent former retail employee.....yah, you don't tell off kids, you don't even hint at telling off kids, and even if you're doing so for their own safetly because what they're doing id going to get them hurt you'd better be hoping management will stand up,for you.

    I always made a point of thanking parents will well behaved kids.....

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  5. But her precious little snowflake was only expressing his creativity through ingenious new percussion instruments! You stifled that and damaged his fragile ego and self esteem. Mean, mean man.

    :P

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  6. Anonymous7:40 PM

    Like you my backside would have been smoking.I would have paid fore the chips also and watched my parents and siblings ate them.

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  7. "Had that been me with MY parents, I'd have gotten my butt lit up and been marched out of the store, and there certainly wouldn't have been a hot dog coming."

    Mine to. But not all kids are like that today (or parents.) There always were some zeros in every generation.

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