Clean up after your baby. Seriously.

[Midorikawa]

So, I'm flying home from seeing relatives in Texas, and we're in the Dallas/Ft. Worth airport. If you've never been there, it's monstrous, and you can spend hours wandering the shops alone. We got there early, so we grabbed a meal, and went to our terminal. While waiting, a mom was there with her baby walking him around and pointing to the planes as they came and went.

The kid threw up, which babies do, and only some made it on the spit rag. The kid did a rather impressive mini rendition of The Exorcist, puking while turning his head, and managing to cover a 2' arc of carpet.

The mom seemed not even phased by this impressive display, bent down, and started trying to clean up the mess with the blankie. I thought nothing of it and went back to my Nethack (yes...I have nethack on my lappy...much to the wife's dismay.)

45 minutes later, boarding time comes, and I see the blankie and the arc of puke still on the ground, and no mom. Guess she decided her little Old Faithful made too much of a mess and left it as is. I told the lady taking tickets about it as I boarded so they didn't have a huge surprise later.

[LillFilly]

Yeah, people do that all the time in my mall; and not just babies! Some people are just...pure disgusting.

Actually, someone left a bathroom stall without flushing while HK was in there cleaning. HK pointed-out they'd forgotten to flush and the customer (AKA dickwad) said "No, that's YOUR job!"

[AnaKhouri]

Ugh. If my kid makes a mess, I make every effort to clean it up. I made the kid, he made the mess, is too little to clean up himself, so it's MY job.

Once at my old bookstore some genius removed a bunch of Michael Connelly books from the shelf, THREW UP on the shelf, and replaced the books. I did not find it until much later, by the smell...

I mean, it's one thing if you're sick, but that took premeditation.

[blas]

I gave up on expecting a lot of parents to clean up after their kids after working in two restaurants.

I could sweep/vaccuum around the same booth/table for several minutes and still not be able to get every single cracker crum and piece of food that the baby dropped.

Then there was the Jerry Springer guest-ish looking white trash family that changed their baby's diaper on the table after they ate and left it there as my tip.

[The Last to Know]

I've given up on people cleaning up after themselves & now once in a while take pictures of interesting messes (not gross ones) and put them on my Facebook (link to my FB in my profile - please tell me you are from here) - my boss knows about it & doesn't care.

Wednesday I took my youngest to the doctors for a follow-up appt and there was a man (late 30's or early 40's) who had walked in before us - registed & then went in the bathroom in the waiting room. When he came out - I went in and he hadn't bothered to flush. If he had still been there when I came out I would have remarked loudly about grown people who don't know how to flush a toilet. What an idiot!

[draco664]

The mom seemed not even phased by this impressive display,

I doubt many parents would be. I know my daughters seemed to be able to, on occasion, produce around 200% of their body volume in vomit and project it into the next postcode.

Once, when my youngest had performed a similar feat in the OP while in a restaurant, I cleaned up as best I could (with the limited supplies of wet wipes I had) and then asked the manager for some napkins or something. He shook his head, told me not to worry about it, and got a mop to clean it up himself.

I always thought that if I'd hadn't tried to clean it up first, he wouldn't have been anywhere near as accomodating.

[Midorikawa]

I doubt many parents would be. I know my daughters seemed to be able to, on occasion, produce around 200% of their body volume in vomit and project it into the next postcode.

See, those of us without kids don't know about things like exploding diapers, and projectile vomit that defies the laws of physics. I thought it was an impressive feat, but then again, the only kids I want have 4 legs, fur, and bark at the mail man.

[draco664]

See, those of us without kids don't know about things like exploding diapers, and projectile vomit that defies the laws of physics. I thought it was an impressive feat, but then again, the only kids I want have 4 legs, fur, and bark at the mail man.

Hey, I'm not saying that it wasn't an impressive feat, just that most parents wouldn't be surprised...

[dalesys]

We were astounded that our second child ever gained weight.

He threw up astounding quantities after every time he nursed and still got (baby) chubby.

[zzapp the witch]

My second son had that problem dalesys, turned out that his stomach was too small. Took a bit for it to catch up with the rest of him and it stopped. Just be glad that he didn't have blood coming up, too! (That's some scary stuff to have happen to your 5 week old....)