Our store isn't an amusement park or a daycare

[Julesy]

[QUOTE=Legal Eagle;734367][QUOTE=jjllbb;734335]- The mother who hands their baby a toy to CHEW on until they get to the register and hand it over to me because they had no intention of buying it.

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Why on earth doesn't your store have a policy that the customer in that situation has to purchase the item?

Agreed. It should be "You bite it - you buy it."

[KellyHabersham]

For the last, if you catch the parents leaving the store without their kid, let them know you're calling CPS about an abandoned child. If they leave anyway without their kid, follow through.

Sounds about like what we nearly had to do at the library a few years ago - some woman apparently had a semi-regular habit of leaving her kids unattended in the library while she was off shopping at stores in the nearby power center. (don't recall how many kids she had or how old they were, just that they were all under 10)

[vloglady]

Our library system actually had so many kids left unattended in the library after school that they started a "Latchkey Program". We had to hire people to take the kids to the program room. they had their snack (THEY brought it), the person helped with homework, and did a craft. Of course, we had to supply all craft materials. And these people were adults, so not a cheap teenager.

People could drop their kids off after school and WE had to take care of them. WE're not just books anymore, people. We're free babysitting!

[Jay 2K Winger]

Ohhh, yes, we get this at the wholesale club.

For starters, right as you enter, you walk into our electronics department. One of the demo TVs has a Blu-Ray player hooked up to it, and in lieu of playing the same 15-min looped demo disc that we got back in 2007, I or one of the other FDLP people will bring in family-appropriate movies on Blu-Ray or DVD to play on the player. The default now is "Kung Fu Panda," because it's low-maintenance (the FDLPs don't have to get the remote out and re-start it when it finishes) and it's a good movie. Although at the moment, I have the recent "Alice in Wonderland" in there. (If anyone objects to it enough, we'll swap it back out for Kung Fu Panda.)

Well, kids will come in and see these movies playing and stop to watch. Sometimes the parents will even let them stay up front to watch it while they do their shopping. Technically, we're not supposed to let them do that, but as long as the children aren't blocking traffic or acting up and are behaving themselves, we let them do so.

Nevertheless, I have to stop the kids from dragging up the display models of the office chairs from the office supplies section to sit on. And periodically have to stop people from messing about with the Blu-Ray player itself. Don't touch the buttons, please. No, pressing 'Play' on the player won't start the movie again. Please don't touch it, don't-- dammit, now I have to get it back to the main menu screen.

The displays of our patio furniture always attract the more sedentary folk for a good sit, and that's fine.

Our sporting goods aisle has a basketball hoop set up, and there are, of course, basketballs on that aisle. Without fail, we'll find a couple of people playing an impromptu game in that aisle, trying to be careful about it. Yesterday, I was doing the re-shops, and passed that aisle a couple of different times, and I gave the two guys doing it a Look as I passed by. They didn't take the hint, so the next time I passed, I stopped long enough to tell them, "Don't play around guys," and to their credit, they took the hint and left.

[superhotelworker]

We have guests that do in the lobby. They send their child down to bother me while i'm working and they're 'getting ready'. I had one girl come down here sick because her mom wouldn't wake up!
I had to walk her back to their room and wake her mother up to take care of her child.

[magiccat26]

When I worked in a pet store in college, we often had parents drop their kids off while they went off shopping. I got tired of having to constantly monitor someone else's children in a place where a misplaced finger could get bit or an animal tramatized.

So, with the owner's permission I created a sign that said, "ATTENTION PARENTS - Unattended Children will be fed to the snakes."

We had 3 large burmese pythons that were each over 10 feet long...the kids knew this. I LOVED the expression on their faces when they would reach for the door handle, spot the sign (right at their eye level) and freeze. Most of the time I would catch their eye through the window and nod my head, slowly, with an evil smile on my face...which would cause them to run off down the sidewalk sceaming, "MOMMY!"

I also received permission from the owner to tell any kid that was in the store without a parent for more than 5 minutes that they would have to leave. Most of them would just stand in front of the store staring in the windows. One woman tried to complain and was screamed at by the owner for thinking she was providing a free babysitting service (a real witch...but she didn't take sh*t from anyone). Word must have gotten around, because I had to throw out very few kids after that.

[LillFilly]

Ooooh; love the sign! I saw one that said "unattended children will be given a shot of expresso and a free puppy."

My last mall had 2-game stores, a book store, 2-toy stores, an arcade and several teenie-bopper style stores, so we got LOTS of calls for children who had been left behind for over an hour. I looooved paging the parents and chewing them out Doesn't happen as much where I work now, but we do get quite a few kids around the ages of 10 who are dropped-off without supervision, and when they get in trouble it's a pain in the ass to get a hold of their parents!

Of course, if the kids are left behind and get in trouble, go missing, etc, it's OUR FAULT FOR NOT WATCHING THEM! I so want to write-up a bill for my babysitting rates!

On a side note, I was doing a walk through of a store once and saw a woman in the checkout line brushing her daughter's hair. I didn't think much of it until I saw her put the brush back in the display bin of brushes! My brain short-circuited right there! I made a big show of putting on a glove, taking the brush and bringing it the cashier to be damaged-out, and explaining what had happened. I think the lady got charged for it too.

[boringscreenname]

Last Christmas the mall near us, set up a bunch of Wiis and games in the main area of the mall. Apparently a lot of parents decided to use that as a free baby-sitting service while they went and did their Christmas shopping. I've never seen so many unattended children all at once.

I work in a hospital now, and last fall during football season, some parents let their 3 kids go to one of the games, alone, in a major metropolitan city. After the game the kids came to wait in our Lobby for their parents to pick them up. The parents showed up over an hour later.

[MaseMan]

I guess these parents have never heard of the concept of a child abduction before.

[Kristev]

Clearly not.

[Mike Taylor]

our toy manager always has to remind mothers that he is not a babysitter.

A mother actually got sooo mad at him b/c he went to lunch while "her baby" was in the dept. She wanted him fired for leaving "her baby" alone"in this big store" She even went on to say how she would press charges if anything would of happened.

WTH is wrong with some people

Ooooh. I would have loved to see this woman try that at my old job in Chicago. We used to call in CPD pretty regularly for unattended children in the toy shop. We took child safety seriously in that store and parents who fucked up got to spend some time with the boys in blue.