What I'm Watching: Lockup (They're letting the inmates work with rescue animals...interesting concept)
In an effort to forage for the essentials like toothpaste and toilet paper, the hubs and I had to make our weekly trek to Wal-Mart yesterday (exciting way to spend a weekend, no?). As usual, within 30 seconds of entering the parking lot, I was ready to start strangling people with my bare hands. What is it about shopping that turns ordinary people into card carrying members of the moron club?
In the interest of keeping the body count to a minimum and myself out of prison, I'd like to propose the following rules for shopping:
1.) When you are leaving the store, pushing your cart across the lot, you are not surrounded by a protective force field. My car is big, your bones are fragile, maybe you'd like to at least give a cursory glance around before jetting out in front of me.
2.) Parent is a verb. It's something that you need to do, not just something that you are. If your offspring is screaming, climbing out of your shopping cart, or opening packages of food and randomly tossing the contents on the floor? The correct response is not to continue chatting on your cell phone whilst randomly yelling and/or slapping said offspring. Put the damn phone down and pay proper attention to your children!
3.) While I'm on the subject of phones. Put the damn phone down already! Seriously. A quick phone call to find out if you need paper towels? No problem. An extended phone call about who did what with who at the bar on Friday night? No one needs to hear that, especially the cashier who is being paid minimum wage for you to ignore her while she waits for you to stop gossiping long enough to pay her already! And people who talk on cell phones in the bathroom stalls? I'm also looking at you here. This is a situation where multitasking is NOT a good thing.
4.) Thanks to technology, the world is now a very small place. There are cell phones, social networking sites, texting options and the good old fashioned land line phone and while I'm super psyched that you've run into your old neighbor/cousin/sister/dear friend/mail carrier, stopping in the middle of a narrow aisle to catch up on the last 20 years of news? Not acceptable. I really don't care where your son is going to college or how many kids your daughter has. So exchange phone numbers, promise to look each other up on facebook and get the hell out of my way already!
5.) The express lanes? The ones that say 20 items or less? Stop pulling into those lanes with a cart filled to overflowing. And when you do get into those lanes? Don't look annoyed when people like me, who are stuck behind your dumbass with one or two items, make a comment about your apparent lack of math and/or reading skills.
I really have never seen the appeal of "retail therapy" but I do understand the need for therapy after a retail experience!
For those of us that do parent, boy do we get the looks from people. It is like I am an alien for correcting my child. Example: Kate kicked Ryan and I told her she was going to time out when we got home. I also stressed that kicking people is not acceptable. Kate at this time decided to yell loudly and cry because she got caught red handed( oops that would be footed). I then told her that if she continued I would find a square in the store for her to do her timeout right then.
ReplyDeleteThe people around me were giving me all kinds of bizarre looks. Which makes it uncomfortable to parent while out in public.
@Kay, come shop w/ me. I promise, I never give parents alien like looks for properly correcting their children. :) Unfortunately, all too often, all we see are parents who are either ignoring their children completely and letting them run amok or parents who are "lazy parenting"? I don't even know what to call it.
ReplyDeleteLike the lady at Wal-Mart the other day, she had four young kids (I'd say all in the 2-5 range) in her cart. They were all cranky, hitting each other, climbing over each other and just generally creating chaos. Meanwhile, mom is on the phone chatting away and her only response is to periodically scream (literally) "STOP!" and then randomly slap whichever kid was closest to her. THAT drives me insane!
Oh how I hate it when parents do not correct thier children. Drives me insane. My kids think I am the meanest mom on earth. I hope that someday they will realize that I had them learn how to behave for the betterment of their lives. When you are an adult you must follow the rules set forth by your boss or no job. The sooner they learn to follow the rules and act appropriately the better. My kids by all means are not angels as you have witnessed, but I do try to teach them what is acceptable and what is not.
ReplyDeleteAll good moms are the "meanest moms on earth" dontcha know? LOL. Someday they will have kids of their own and then they'll "get it". :)
ReplyDeleteAs someone who works in retail, you have only scratched the surface of the stupidity and callousness that many shoppers do. The cellphone is a great example. As is the parent.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite intervention on a parent ignoring a screaming child. The parent was talking on the cell phone, complaining that her husband or boy friend was out of work (while buying a lot of useless stuff?) the kid in the cart was screaming.
An older lady is trying to get around this mess. She taps the cell phone talker on the shoulder.
"Honey, hang the damn phone up and be a mother for five seconds!"
I love that older woman!
Oh my word, this made me laugh and want to cry. Walmart is like the one place you can go and see the worst sides of society. There and the BMV.
ReplyDeleteThe worst ever? Once I saw a lady walk in--the waeather was about 55 degrees F and she was carrying a baby on her hip with nothing but a diaper on. Seriously. No shirt no, shoes, nothing. And the diaper was leaking all down the poor baby's leg. And she didn't care. Just plopped the child, dirty diaper and all into a shopping trolley and went about her business. Ugh...I'm not sure who was a worse human being. Her, for treating her baby like that or the rest of us for not calling social services on her.
@M. I've experienced the acute pain of working retail. Aren't customers who say what you can't the best?!? That older lady is my hero!!
ReplyDelete@Carol: Yikes! 55° and they can't figure out that the baby need clothes and the diaper? Poor little baby! Some people really shouldn't be parents. Honestly.