I Just Want to Slap Some Parents

[Thud-n-Blunder]

Unfortunately, this is not unique to parents...

This attitude is best described in a character quote from the MMORPG "Guild Wars":

This lab is the perfect place to run a full battery of tests. There's good equipment here and more importantly, it's not mine. So I won't care if it gets destroyed.

[Lovecats]

Or 8mm home movies. My dad has some color from '57-58...

We did have some that my Dad took in the 50's and my husband actually had one that we used when my oldest was young but I didn't use it at all so no movies. Especially if it happened when he was at work. Husband even stopped using it that much.

[dalesys]

This was back around 1978/79 so no youtubes or social media of any kind.

Or 8mm home movies. My dad has some color from '57-58...

[Lovecats]

Just no youtubes of the Glazed Doughnut Monster!

This was back around 1978/79 so no youtubes or social media of any kind.

[KellyHabersham]

I agree, some people should be charged extra if they can't keep their kids under control.
(I should start charging people extra at my place coz they keep changing where they wanna sit)

Still, this reminds me of something I saw on the news. A hair salon put up a notice saying parents of kids who throw tantrums would be charged extra. This caused a bit of a miff, coz it offended some parents of autistic children.

But anyway, I believe in charging parents extra if they can't learn to keep their kids on a leash

I too, agree on this......would be nice if we could add a "Clean-up" fine to library cards, but administration would not see that as being customer-friendly. (And unfortunately, because it IS part of my job duties to clean up after customers, I can't really complain about having to do my job)

[PoliteBoy]

This exactly!

There needs to be a brat tax to pay for the clean-up!

I agree, some people should be charged extra if they can't keep their kids under control.
(I should start charging people extra at my place coz they keep changing where they wanna sit)

Still, this reminds me of something I saw on the news. A hair salon put up a notice saying parents of kids who throw tantrums would be charged extra. This caused a bit of a miff, coz it offended some parents of autistic children.

But anyway, I believe in charging parents extra if they can't learn to keep their kids on a leash

[dalesys]

I have a picture that I could put on here if I could find it of my youngest eating spaghetti and wearing most of it.

Just no youtubes of the Glazed Doughnut Monster!

[Lovecats]

Did it look like the images you get if you go to http://images.google.com/ and search for baby spaghetti mess? (I think that first image with the round wooden "hat" might be a stock image.)

I have a picture that I could put on here if I could find it of my youngest eating spaghetti and wearing most of it.

[Argus]

When my daughter was a wee little thing, every time we went to the buffet in town it would look like a food-based splash zone around her highchair no matter how hard we tried to watch her.

Did it look like the images you get if you go to http://images.google.com/ and search for baby spaghetti mess? (I think that first image with the round wooden "hat" might be a stock image.)

[HawaiianShirts]

The messy family in the OP sounds like many of the families that visit our local thrift shops. Each shop has one aisle of toys, maybe two. Parents let their kids look at the toys. Kids take toys off the shelf to get a closer look or to play with them. Kids leave the toys scattered across the whole floor of the toy area. Parents buy the kids a thing (or not) and leave the mess.

I had never noticed that in my home town's thrift shops. Maybe it never happened; maybe I just never saw it. But it made me mad when I encountered such chaos after having my own kids.

So, when we go into thrift shops, Little Shirts (age 5, currently) has been given a rule to follow: If he takes a toy off the shelf, he puts it back when he's done with it. If I find that he has left a toy on the floor, we don't buy him anything from that store. It's worked! I rarely have to do more than remind him of the rule when we enter the shop. Now that his baby sister can walk, he has voluntarily extended the rule to her and will clean up after her and even give other kids dirty looks if they leave a mess.

Now if I could just get him to stop randomly pushing my shopping cart sideways in the grocery store and nearly making me crash into shelves or other shoppers...

[EvilEmpryss]

Seriously, even when the parents don't let the kids go wild, toddlers will drop crumbs and bits of food, and I knew it would take longer to clean up, so I tipped accordingly.

This. Oh my god this.

When my daughter was a wee little thing, every time we went to the buffet in town it would look like a food-based splash zone around her highchair no matter how hard we tried to watch her. We would not only tip generously for the inconvenience, we also apologized to the wait staff. After picking up what we could, it was the least we could do.

[mathnerd]

There needs to be a brat tax to pay for the clean-up!

When my kids were toddlers I tipped around 50% by way of apology for the mess they left behind, and that was with me doing everything I could to contain said mess. Toddlers just aren't neat people. Seriously, even when the parents don't let the kids go wild, toddlers will drop crumbs and bits of food, and I knew it would take longer to clean up, so I tipped accordingly.

[MoonCat]

I'm very sorry my next-door neighbors apparently showed up at your workplace.

[cindybubbles]

It's just totally normal for kids to play with and then discard merchandise haphazardly at my store, and probably everyone here who's worked near kids. Well, adults too. I often daydream of keeping everything behind bulletproof glass, barbed wire, and an electric fence.

Yes, but if you do that, you'll get complaints from SC's about why everything is kept out of reach for them, or you'll get SC's asking you to rummage through the T-shirt display while trying to find the correct size of "medium" or the right shade of blue.

Trust me, this is better. At least they won't hound you all at once.

[dalesys]

There needs to be a brat tax to pay for the clean-up!

And a treat/credit for unmessy kids s.