So our tills have a little detector for the belts and when groceries cross it the belt stops moving. This is also the case if the belt's been moving for a while without anything crossing the detector. Are tills are set up to tills a pod, facing away from each other. As shown in picture. This is probably a familiar setup to all of you. With the brackets being the spot where the customer/employee interact over. I was on till 8 as is my usual because I hate the cold and try to keep as far away from the constantly opening doors as possible (I do evening shifts now).
SC comes up to my till carrying her kid. Instead of setting him down on the ground an keeping an eye on it she puts him on the empty till opposite mine (till9). I tell the SC that she can't have her kid on the belt and refuse to serve her because it's a safety hazard. We aren't allowed as staff to touch the kid because nothing has happened (yet) despite it being at risk.
Of course this is when the kid discovers the motion detector that moves the belt. Also that if he moves his fingers at the right spot the belt moves! And to a toddler this must seem the coolest thing ever. But before anyone can actually do anything the toddlers fingers are sucked up in the corner gap between the rotating belt, the side of the belt and the metal plate over the belt. An adult can't get their fingers in there, the gap's too small. A kid on the other hand...
[[warning: content ahead may not be suitable for all audiences]]
Of course the kids screaming bloody murder not that I blame him at all (I blame the parent). There's panic disorder and chaos as per the usual. I happened to be the first person to think clearly (thank you world for me being born to a military family) and toss something onto the belt (knowing that when it crosses the sensor it'll stop the rotation faster then me physically flicking the switch). Move around to inside flick the switch to turn it off. Grab the kids wrist so he doesn't do more damage to himself then he already (understandably) has. Have someone take over holding the kids wrist and another to hold the struggling kid. Yell at my boss to grab the damn FirstAid kit (because deer in the headlights is not a particularly useful look at the time). Send someone to get the tool kit from the back so someone can take the damn till apart (there's a panel of metal screwed to the side (can't believe I'd ever be thankful for cheap store equipment). Some throws the FirstAid kit at me (literally) and I'm not sure I want to know what I said there since I was raised in part by a very Irish Navel Engineer... And My mum was navy... I tie tiny tourniquets around the part of his fingers I can reach because I can tell from the blood that something is mangled just not what. Someone gets the thing open and notice it's technically a 'crush' injury. So I ask if anyone's dialled 911 (probably should have done that earlier) and thankfully someone had. I asked the operator if I should leave it be or take it out. On one hand, crush injuries are not good and releasing the crushed body part can have some very very bad consequences. On the other hand, the kid's panicked and struggling, will probably do more damage to themselves if it's left alone and I can't see shit about what's actually happened with the fingers other then where they're caught and that's something's bleeding badly. While I know how much a healthy adult can lose before bad shit happens I have no idea when it comes to children. (Possibly because my FirstAid courses are almost entirely with the military and last I checked toddlers weren't allowed in combat). I explain that I have a tourniquet on the kid and have to answer a bunch of how is it applied? where? How tight?
Meanwhile I'm on my back crooked to the side looking up at the mechanic-y bits and the human bits that are doing things the human body isn't supposed to do. I don't know whether I was in shock or not but I didn't realize that there shouldn't be dripping coming down until I did realize and that's not the realization one wants to ever make... Especially not in a cramped spot with jabby bits of mechanical crap. Thankfully operators are apparently trained to deal with freak outs.
I was told to try to remove it but not to force it if it didn't want to come out. Thankfully it came out no problem after trying to manually rotate the belt in the opposite direction it was meant to go in.
Then we find out why the kid was screaming bloody murder (aside from the obvious) because he's missing a damn finger. So I send someone else to look underneath where it might have fallen if it's not lost in the mechanical bits and pieces. Because I cannot handle that shit. Morbid little scavenger hunts are not for me. Nope. And hell no.
I deal with the amputation as professionally as I can (meaning I keep commentary to my inside voice though no less freaked out. Sims are one thing, even if the dummies scream at you in weird robot voices, the actual shit is much different). Elevate and apply pressure.
Apparently I spent a good time alternating between cussing out the SC, trying to comfort the kid (unsuccessfully), swearing like a sailor, and complaining how I really don't get paid enough to deal with shit like this. Strings of words such as fuckity fuck shit appear regularly (or so I was told). The actual paramedics arrive finally and I got talked into helping. By that I mean I was walked through jabbing a needle in someone to apply an IV line for fluids. I promptly thereafter lose what's left of my sanity while the nice medics try to smother me with a blanket and do whatever pokey prody stuff they do to their vict--- I mean patients.
I'm not sure if the missing didget was ever found or not. I know when I get back to work I'm never going on that till ever.
Thank god the media hasn't got their hands on it. And hopefully never will. The last thing I need is for someone to get security footage (from one of the cameras that actually work which would be a chore in and of itself) and post it to the Internet. Stuff like that goes viral and the Internet is forever. I've spent most of the day in the shower and curled in my bed reading. I've disconnected my phone because work people won't stop calling and its interrupting my 'ME' time.
SC comes up to my till carrying her kid. Instead of setting him down on the ground an keeping an eye on it she puts him on the empty till opposite mine (till9). I tell the SC that she can't have her kid on the belt and refuse to serve her because it's a safety hazard. We aren't allowed as staff to touch the kid because nothing has happened (yet) despite it being at risk.
Of course this is when the kid discovers the motion detector that moves the belt. Also that if he moves his fingers at the right spot the belt moves! And to a toddler this must seem the coolest thing ever. But before anyone can actually do anything the toddlers fingers are sucked up in the corner gap between the rotating belt, the side of the belt and the metal plate over the belt. An adult can't get their fingers in there, the gap's too small. A kid on the other hand...
[[warning: content ahead may not be suitable for all audiences]]
Of course the kids screaming bloody murder not that I blame him at all (I blame the parent). There's panic disorder and chaos as per the usual. I happened to be the first person to think clearly (thank you world for me being born to a military family) and toss something onto the belt (knowing that when it crosses the sensor it'll stop the rotation faster then me physically flicking the switch). Move around to inside flick the switch to turn it off. Grab the kids wrist so he doesn't do more damage to himself then he already (understandably) has. Have someone take over holding the kids wrist and another to hold the struggling kid. Yell at my boss to grab the damn FirstAid kit (because deer in the headlights is not a particularly useful look at the time). Send someone to get the tool kit from the back so someone can take the damn till apart (there's a panel of metal screwed to the side (can't believe I'd ever be thankful for cheap store equipment). Some throws the FirstAid kit at me (literally) and I'm not sure I want to know what I said there since I was raised in part by a very Irish Navel Engineer... And My mum was navy... I tie tiny tourniquets around the part of his fingers I can reach because I can tell from the blood that something is mangled just not what. Someone gets the thing open and notice it's technically a 'crush' injury. So I ask if anyone's dialled 911 (probably should have done that earlier) and thankfully someone had. I asked the operator if I should leave it be or take it out. On one hand, crush injuries are not good and releasing the crushed body part can have some very very bad consequences. On the other hand, the kid's panicked and struggling, will probably do more damage to themselves if it's left alone and I can't see shit about what's actually happened with the fingers other then where they're caught and that's something's bleeding badly. While I know how much a healthy adult can lose before bad shit happens I have no idea when it comes to children. (Possibly because my FirstAid courses are almost entirely with the military and last I checked toddlers weren't allowed in combat). I explain that I have a tourniquet on the kid and have to answer a bunch of how is it applied? where? How tight?
Meanwhile I'm on my back crooked to the side looking up at the mechanic-y bits and the human bits that are doing things the human body isn't supposed to do. I don't know whether I was in shock or not but I didn't realize that there shouldn't be dripping coming down until I did realize and that's not the realization one wants to ever make... Especially not in a cramped spot with jabby bits of mechanical crap. Thankfully operators are apparently trained to deal with freak outs.
I was told to try to remove it but not to force it if it didn't want to come out. Thankfully it came out no problem after trying to manually rotate the belt in the opposite direction it was meant to go in.
Then we find out why the kid was screaming bloody murder (aside from the obvious) because he's missing a damn finger. So I send someone else to look underneath where it might have fallen if it's not lost in the mechanical bits and pieces. Because I cannot handle that shit. Morbid little scavenger hunts are not for me. Nope. And hell no.
I deal with the amputation as professionally as I can (meaning I keep commentary to my inside voice though no less freaked out. Sims are one thing, even if the dummies scream at you in weird robot voices, the actual shit is much different). Elevate and apply pressure.
Apparently I spent a good time alternating between cussing out the SC, trying to comfort the kid (unsuccessfully), swearing like a sailor, and complaining how I really don't get paid enough to deal with shit like this. Strings of words such as fuckity fuck shit appear regularly (or so I was told). The actual paramedics arrive finally and I got talked into helping. By that I mean I was walked through jabbing a needle in someone to apply an IV line for fluids. I promptly thereafter lose what's left of my sanity while the nice medics try to smother me with a blanket and do whatever pokey prody stuff they do to their vict--- I mean patients.
I'm not sure if the missing didget was ever found or not. I know when I get back to work I'm never going on that till ever.
Thank god the media hasn't got their hands on it. And hopefully never will. The last thing I need is for someone to get security footage (from one of the cameras that actually work which would be a chore in and of itself) and post it to the Internet. Stuff like that goes viral and the Internet is forever. I've spent most of the day in the shower and curled in my bed reading. I've disconnected my phone because work people won't stop calling and its interrupting my 'ME' time.
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