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Thanks for your response.My kid is not a saint but I know what happened and do not appreciate anyone questioning the veracity of my account. I am sure there are several threads about badly behaved kids and how they are a nuisance etc.. this is about dealing exactly with people when a child does NOTHING wrong. My daughter asked me all the way home "what did I do wrong ma, aunty screamed at me".
In these days of social media as a shopper you don't have to take any mess from anyone. If you get bad customer service let the manager your going to www.yelp.com
As for bumping into your daughter the store should have cameras to verify. Don't spend your money where your not wanted.
We were shopping at a big sports store yesterday with my 3.yo daughter. We were looking at sleeping bags, tent etc. My daughter was walking next to us and asked to buy a ball and so we took one and gave it to her. She just carried it around the store. For some odd reason one of the sales ladies suddenly appeared and loudly said to my daughter "PLEASE PUT THAT BALL DOWN". We were startled and I told her that we were planning to purchase it. She then said "Children cannot play inside the store". She wasn't playing ,just carrying it around, same as if an adult were carrying it. Welet it go because we had to finish shopping and go somewhere. 5 mins later the same person just ran straight into my daughter who staggered back. At this point we just left.
It was odd to see someone be bothered by the mere presence of her and make our shopping a nightmare. Has anyone had similar experiences?
I was once in a toy store where the owner had put toys out for the kids to try out and play with. My son was a toddler then, and he started playing on a miniature piano. He wasn't banging on it - he was actually trying to play it, but in a clumsy toddler way (it was clearly a toy designed for the 2-3 age range and not for an older child), and the owner came over and told us not to play with it because he was banging too hard on the keys and he would break it. It was very uncomfortable, and my son felt bad. I wasn't too surprised when the toy store went out of business shortly after. Before that we'd gone there often, but after that I didn't feel comfortable - why put toys out if you are going to worry about kids breaking them?
Here and there I also encountered salespeople who clearly didn't want my kid in their store, so we left. If it's a women's clothing store and it's the middle of a weekday, then it's your choice - either be nice to kids while the moms shop, or don't have any sales. I think it's pretty stupid when people don't welcome kids into a store (at least the kind that doesn't contain breakable things).
Yeah you're right. I don't complain about service or retail employees because I know what a thankless job it is but these are confusing experiences for children (being screamed at by random persons) and I want her it understand its not her fault.
Your original account of the story doesn't mention screaming.
Not until you quoted your child " "what did I do wrong ma, aunty screamed at me".
My kid was 3 once. I never just let him randomly carry things around. I needed his hands free to grab to steer around the place.
I owned a pet store - a concession space in McCrory's variety store. You want to talk about having to be ON GUARD?
One idiot put her tiny kid around 2 or 4 in MY STORE UNSUPERVISED before I was even OPEN with the lights on ...while she shopped. The kid got bit by my MACAW in his cage minding his own business. A powerful bird who could have taken her finger off.
HOW DID THE LADY BUMP INTO YOUR CHILD if she was NEXT TO YOU where she belonged? She didn't bump into YOU but HER?
NO sorry, sounds like you were not supervising her like I would expect.
Thanks for your response.My kid is not a saint but I know what happened and do not appreciate anyone questioning the veracity of my account. I am sure there are several threads about badly behaved kids and how they are a nuisance etc.. this is about dealing exactly with people when a child does NOTHING wrong. My daughter asked me all the way home "what did I do wrong ma, aunty screamed at me".
Who is "aunty?" Sorry, i don't know SE Asian culture well if it is an ethnic word, i would like to be educated.
From your original post, i think your kids was prob picking up on YOU being upset more than being scolded by a stranger. Unless she has NEVER been scolded before and i would find this just odd that any child is perfect.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Caleb Longstreet
The difference was in our day, we wouldn't have to be told not to carry it around. It sounds like the clerk was half right. Imagine if your kid knocked something down accidentally and broke it. Would you have paid for it? Better yet, would you have PRO-ACTIVELY apologized and said I'm sorry, we'll pay for the damages and then promptly have your kid pay for it when they get home? . . . . .
I could not agree more! Your daughter was basically "using" the item prior to purchase. Some people do this but i always thought it was ill mannered and time has not changed my opinion on this.
You see people in the grocery stores all the time drinking a bottle of water or something and then "mysteriously" you see empty bottles here and there . . . .
I've worked retail. I know of which i speak. Now if someone is TRULY dehydrated or a diabetic than you can usually tell this and those drink bottles do not get left littered around the store.
Quote:
Originally Posted by vkhmini
I'm still trying to figure out where the impression comes from that the store employee "hates" kids.
Excellent point. It could have been someone of any age. Although honestly, stumbling 3 year olds are more likely to mishandle toys in a store than an adult.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ss20ts
So did you buy the ball?
EXACTLY!! LOL! She did NOT.
I think this sums up the plight of that minimum wage employee pretty well. She was doing her job to ensure the safety and liability of store. Although she is also supposed to keep customers happy, the customer is NOT ALWAYS RIGHT!
It's my understanding that most people who intend to shoplift will hide the items on their person, in their purse or other containers, or under clothing before they leave the store. So suspicious behavior would be more likely someone stuffing small items into a pocket or purse, putting on new clothing under old clothing in a fitting room, that sort of thing. Even still, I thought I recalled most store policies entailed giving the customer the benefit of the doubt, and not calling it shoplifting till they actually left the store ( hence the electronic devices at the door that go off when an tagged item goes through them).
......
Incorrect unfortunately, some people "steal in plain sight" and walk right out the door w things like either bought them or they came in w them!
OP I think you are missing a point here. Many of us, parents and worked in retail, understand where the employee was coming from. I can't tell you how many parents would give their child something from the store only to not buy it, accidentally drop it and the item break or cause a commotion.
Three years old a ball is a tough item to carry. The ball drops (I don't know what kind or size) however it could roll, bounce, cause someone to step and trip. When you see this multiple times a day you worry about the safety of others in your store. It may sound ridiculous to you, but as a former retail worker I get where the employee was coming from.
If she were carrying a doll, or a small packaged item, I am sure there wouldn't have been such a scene.
You still haven't clarified the employee running into your daughter. Do you care to shed some light?
I used to work at a Barnes & Noble bookstore. We had a kids department. Nearly every day, we had to take children by the hand to go look for their parents in the store, because they were crying for mommy and mommy wasn't there. A couple times a year, we had to go next door to Gart's Sports to look for parents of a child left alone in the kids department (on a couple occasions we had to call the police and report an abandoned child).
Invariably, once found, the parents would say something like "we thought the lady who works there would watch him while we shopped", like our employees are babysitters. Sometimes the parents had even done something as stupid as dropping off their 5 year old, getting back in the car and going down the road to the mall for a few hours of shopping.
There was typically only one employee in the entire department, who was usually busy working. I'm not talking just 10+ year olds, I'm talking everything from toddlers on up. Typically our kids department had 10+ kids for every 1 adult, meaning all those kids had parents who just left them alone with the books and expected employees to watch them and make sure they didn't damage anything. Obviously, it didn't usually end up that way. Smaller kids would get bored and either drool on the books or tear pages out. At that point, we'd go looking for the parents and present them with the book they were now purchasing.
They would typically try to pull the whole "your employee should have watched closer" baloney here too.
That is a perfect example of why retail employees do not like kids in their store.
Carrying a ball is now using it prior to purchase? That is just bizarre. Someone has to carry it to the cashier, presumably.
OP, you just caught a crabby person on a crabby day. Brush it off. The woman probably wasn't screaming or running into your daughter on purpose. I doubt any of it was personal.
There are different type of people who do not like kids but being rude is not acceptable at all.
In a store it might be some other reason , she might came across unlikely situation created by a kid . That can explain her strangely rude behavior.
once in the store a little kid caused a full display of cans fall off , but fortunately the kid was safe. So there are so many explanations for this kind of attitude.
But the people who dislike children and do not wince to show it are disgusting.
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