What customers children do at the checkout.

[HALFHUMANHALFZOMBIE]

One thing about me on till is that I get unyeilding when customers get angry at me but sokme of these customers should smarten up with their kids when they come to the till. There's things I wish they wouldn't do with the merchandise and they should be seperated with another guardian when the Birthday/Christmas present are bought

#1 Child hangs on to unpaid merchandise and when it's time to scan it, infant cries like hell until after I scan it. This annoys me very much how people would do that, shutting up their kid by putting something in their hand that you have is one thing but something you havent bought yet while shopping in a department store you put the unpaid toy or whatever and telling his that he will get the toy back after I scan it drives me up the a$$ ! frickin kid hasn't learned to communicate well and you tell them that you will give it back means nothing to the kid. Quit attaching unpaid Merchandise to your kid.

#2 Mother buys present for his kid and want's me to hide it You are the one who must show your elusive and subtle skills to hide presents, not me while being put on the spot or maybe "gasp" shopping for the present when the kid is not around and you can keep it hidden in the bag as you enter your house and stash it where he/she won't see it! That bothers me so much!!

#3 I deal with child's slobber Why yes I do, a woman one time said she didn't want some and it had a little bit of slobber on it, Please don't flame me for doing this but after examing the candy carefully it looked like it was reasonal to put it back even though I wish I didn't. I would've been stern if it was open but f#cking pay for your sh#t before you contaminate it for petes sake!!

#4 One by one each item the child picks up on the belt and hands to me so I can scan, slowing down the line-up, adults acting like children Nuff said but adults know damn well and they still do it! They act childish by reaching for the bags next to me full of stuff and grabbing it. Can you imagine how pissed off I get when I see adults do that. I mean I mention it every time but this by far is the main reason why I would hate being a Cashier (which I don't unless every customer does it) I would stop their transaction and tell them to give me back the bag of stuff so I could possibly fill it up more and then I will put it on the counter for you to grab with your claw of impatience *end of rant*.

[Marxfan]

#1 Child hangs on to unpaid merchandise and when it's time to scan it, infant cries like hell until after I scan it.

What's worse is kids over the age of 3 and the mother not only allows them to scream and carry on, but demands you give scanned item back to them so they'll shut their kid up. Way to reward bratty behavior, lady. If my siblings and I behaved like that, my mother would have the cashier take it off and we'd end up with nothing! I hate seeing entitlement whores in-the-making.

#2 Mother buys present for his kid and want's me to hide it

This happens to me every Christmas without fail. Look, if I ruin the surprise, don't blame me, blame yourself for being too stupid to shop without your kids!

[Ree]

All of those things bother me so much.

Why the heck don't parents learn to...well...parent!??

The thing about the hiding the present, though, I don't get quite so aggravated.
As a Mom, I knew there were times when it wasn't just the easiest to shop without the child, and it needed to get done.

Sometimes, you just see a too good to pass up bargain, and if you wait until the child isn't with you, then you miss out on it.

I never really had a huge problem with playing along and hiding the gift so the child couldn't see it.

As for the others, though, yeah, major pet peeves.
I never allowed my child to do stupid crap like that because I knew just how irritating it was.

The slobber?? Just gross.
Even my own daughter's slobber grossed me out, so there is no way I would let her slobber all over a food item.
(And not to flame, but no way should you have put it back to be sold. She should have been told that her child had it in her mouth, and it was no longer is saleable condition, so for health reasons, she had to pay for it.)

[Rubystars]

Many times when I worked at Kroger there were children in the basket, picking their nose, then they would try to hand me groceries. Sometimes the parents would get offended if I tried to touch the part the kids didn't touch.

One time I got fed up with a child trying to hand me item after item in a very large order, because it was going so super slow. This was on Thanksgiving day so it was really busy and I didn't want to hold up the line all day.

I let the child hold out an item toward me and I said "Thanks for helping me" and I started just grabbing the other items in the cart while the child continued to hold out the item toward me. I wasn't being mean, I just wanted to get my job done, which was to scan the groceries and get the customer out of there. I scanned the item the child was holding out last.

I will note that this was another nose picker child too.

The mother stormed over to customer service and screeched about how just because I had to work on Thanksgiving that was no excuse to be mean to her child. I told my managers that I wasn't being mean, I just wanted to get it done, and besides, I didn't want to touch the kids boogers. They always acted like the customer was right over there anyway though, but they didn't seem to care about that one because it was so busy.

The most idiotic thing about Kroger was that most of the time, any time a customer would complain about anything, they would drag me up into the office and ream me out about it. Sometimes I left crying because I knew I hadn't done anything wrong. That was my first job too.

I'm glad that now I work at a place where the customers put the groceries on a belt instead of wheeling their basket directly up to me.

[Rubystars]

The slobber?? Just gross.
Even my own daughter's slobber grossed me out, so there is no way I would let her slobber all over a food item.
(And not to flame, but no way should you have put it back to be sold. She should have been told that her child had it in her mouth, and it was no longer is saleable condition, so for health reasons, she had to pay for it.)

I don' t know about his job but I would never be able to tell them something like that. To me it depends on the item. If it was in a sealed package, where the slobber didn't come in contact with the food at all, then it might not be so bad, but if it was a piece of fruit or something then I would have damaged it out.

[Bright_Star]

I've had parents grab the item that the kid was holding onto for dear life, have me scan it & then give it back to the poor kid who's screaming at the top of their lungs. Then they would glare at me like it was MY fault that the kid is screaming.

[Ree]

Well, if push comes to shove, the manager probably wouldn't back you up on it if you tried to force them to pay for it, but, yeah, at the very least, it should have gone in as damaged stock.

Just because it's baby slobber doesn't make it any less sanitary.
If an adult had the bag of candy in their mouth between their teeth, and then put it back, leaving their slobber on the bag, would people be just as quick to wipe it off and dismiss it as "just slobber" and not be concerned because "it didn't get into the package"?

Would you buy a package of candy that you knew had been slobbered on and just wiped off?
I guess my germophobe side is coming out, but the thought just makes me hurl.

[rerant]

At my work the cash lanes are wide open and directly behind me there are rollers to slide items onto the back belt with. Kids are FOREVER playing with them and the parents do NOTHING, even though when the kid is doing that they're so close to me they might as well be directly up my ass.
I've tried a dozen different ways of asking the kids to politely stop doing that, but no matter how I do it I always get hell from the parents.
It's a lose-lose situation.

[BookstoreEscapee]

I don't mind playing along with hiding an item, plus, since we have a 2-level counter it's really easy to slip the item out of sight to scan it.

Try being handed a soggy book that a baby has been chewing on while mom and dad were shopping. Ew. The good parents would grab an extra copy of the book so they could give me a dry one to scan and they wouldn't have to take it away from the baby. It does annoy me sometimes when the kid screams about having to give up their item for 2 seconds, but sometimes it's the kid who has 'attached' him/herself to it, not the parents. But still, it's aggravating, especially when it holds up the line.

[BlaqueKatt]

#1 Child hangs on to unpaid merchandise and when it's time to scan it, infant cries like hell until after I scan it. <snip>Quit attaching unpaid Merchandise to your kid..

my autistic son would often "attach" to something-and being autistic didn't understand totally, I always had an "extra" and would put it back after I was done paying. Normally he would hand the item to the cashier and wait patiently to get it back, but on his bad days, well that's what the "extra" was for-I would hate to think that I was a horrible parent for not wanting to upset my autistic child, that looks like any other child. Not to be snarky, but if you don't know the child, there may be some issue you don't know about.

[Zell]

#4 is the one that bugs me the most.

I wanna get orders done fast and the 3 yr. old just stands directly in my way running back and forth from the cart 1 item at a time. I try pulling the cart towards me but the kid always gets in the way and keeps wanting to help.

I appreciate the help but seriously, this is a business and I wanna get orders done.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

#1 Child hangs on to unpaid merchandise and when it's time to scan it, infant cries like hell until after I scan it. This annoys me very much how people would do that, shutting up their kid by putting something in their hand that you have is one thing but something you havent bought yet while shopping in a department store you put the unpaid toy or whatever and telling his that he will get the toy back after I scan it drives me up the a$$ !

I dont' get why this is a big deal. Kids grab and hold onto things and don't like having to give them up. It doesn't even have to be a toy, it could be a piece of produce, a can of coffee, or a stick deoderant. They are bored, and can reach stuff in the cart from the seat. What's so horrible about having to listen to a baby fuss for the nanosecond it takes you to scan the item? I can't see how it makes me a lousy parent if my bored toddler is holding an item that I take from her so the cashier can scan it, then give it back to her so she will hush up and not be loud an annoying to other people.

I mean, if she started screaming, it would be annoying to everyone within earshot, right? I'm not talking about rewarding a tantrum....I'm just talking about keeping a baby entertained and content so she doesn't throw a tantrum in the first place. (and no, I don't let her slobber on the stuff...that would be rude to the cashier, not to mention unhealthy for everyone.)



Also, Rubystars, I'm not trying to pick you on you here, but if the avoidance of kiddee boogers was your goal, how did waiting till you were done to scan the item the kid was holding out help you do that? Did the boogers fall off while you were scanning everying else? I understand you really didn't have time to play games, I get that. But you could have maybe done a better job humoring the child by simply taking what she was holding and scanning it along with what you were scanning yourself. I've run register before and I fail to see how that would have slowed you down all that much. The mom was sucky for yelling at you, but knowing how SC's are, and how idiot managers are, maybe you could have avoided that whole ugly scenario by just rolling with the situation a little better. I find it's best to try to project what sort of crap might roll my way in any given scenario and just try to stave it off. Not always possible, I know.

[napoleana]

#2 Mother buys present for his kid and want's me to hide it

Sometimes my mother would have no choice but to shop for presents with us, or would see a good one while we were out shopping for other things. She'd snatch it when we weren't looking. When we got to the register? She'd act as though we were being annoying (which often we were), and tell us to "Stop bugging me and go over there (somewhere near by & in sight w/ interesting things)!" We didn't get to come back until everything was done.

Of course we knew what was going on, and she knew that too. But if we tried to find out what it was? BAM! Hand meets ass, and the item is either taken off or returned. Happened to my brother ONCE, and we BOTH learned our lesson.

And that my dears, is how you keep your child's present a surprise.

[Kogarashi]

#1 doesn't bother me too much, largely because kids will attach to things with or without their parents' help, and it often helps entertain them in the store (I know I don't always remember to put toys in the diaper bag when we head out, and my baby will grab things around her, even at only 6 months). But that's also why I was glad for scanning guns at Wal-Mart. Instead of having to take the item from the child, I just had to reach around with the scanning gun and zap the barcode quickly.

Hiding presents isn't so much of a problem. Parents don't always get to go shopping without their children. My husband works a pretty long day and can't watch the baby then, and we don't have the gas to waste for a single trip to the store just to pick up a present when the baby's left at home. It's okay right now because she's too young to realize we're getting a present for her, but for the future I take comfort in the fact that I've purchased presents under several people's noses before without them noticing.

The kid picking up the items from the belt was annoying when it happened. I just tried to integrate it into my speed-scanning so I could still go fast while humoring the child in the process.

I must be lucky. I've rarely had slobbered-on items handed to me as "not wanted." Rest assured, if my baby's slobbering on something in the store, I will buy it and make sure to either read the barcode number to the cashier or bring a dry spare to the register. Worst slobber-item I had was the mom who tried to hand me a half-eaten apple to ring up (apples are sold by weight). I ended up picking up the largest uneaten apple in her purchase and ringing it twice, instead.

[sarahj]

My mum works as the manager of a kids' department, and she hates having toys around. She tells me that many parents just hand a toy to their kid, who plays with it and slobbers on it while they shop (she's in clothing), then the parent leaves it near the exit when they leave. So at the end of the day, she rounds up a bunch of disgusting toys. Small soft toys (for newborns I guess) are in an out-of-the-way corner, so she finds their packaging around where parents take the toys out. And I guess the kid gets to keep the toy that way.