Annoying Alarms And More Annoying Children

I’m a former childcare worker. I LOVE working with kids, and that’s no secret. But today, the universe decided to test me.

I work at one of those stores where everything is pretty cheap, but there’s a really good variety of products. I am doing my business on the register when, suddenly, I hear a weird buzzy-beepy kind of noise, far off in the store. I look at my coworker on the other register, and we both make confused faces and shrug. A few minutes later, the noise is still going.

Coworker: “What is that?”

Me: “Maybe it’s the emergency exit.”

Coworker: “That’s probably it.”

She goes to check it out and comes back.

Coworker: “Yeah, someone pushed open the emergency exit door, and nobody here has the key to make it shut up.”

So, we suffer.

Cue me apologizing for the noise to every customer I have to ring up, and explaining that someone opened the emergency exit and we can’t turn it off.

Then, a family comes up to my register. This kid — young, but definitely old enough to know better — points out the noise and laughs.

Kid: “That was me! It was an accident, though.”

Mother: “He wanted to open it because he thought something was back there and wanted to go see it.”

So, therefore, it was not an accident. This is fine. No problem. I understand curiosity.

But then, this kid starts spinning the bagging station around while I’m trying to bag things, whining to his mom the whole time about how he wants to go home and she’s taking so long. I keep trying to bag things, but he won’t stop spinning it, so I just start scanning things and setting them to the side on my station instead of attempting to bag them.

Mother: “Cut it out! They’re trying to do their job!”

Kid: “I want my [toy]! And I want it now!”

Mother: “It’s probably already been bagged.”

Kid: *To me* “You’re hiding my toy from me! I want it!”

Then, he complains that some of our balloons are all the way up on the ceiling.

Kid: “Why are your balloons up there? Shouldn’t they be down lower? How will you get them down?”

Blah, blah, blah. I give him some of my classic kid banter.

Me: “Hey, if someone was really, really tall, they could just jump up and grab them!”

The kid laughed, and I felt accomplished.

He didn’t help his mom put her bags in the cart, but he left, and that’s what matters.

That was only thirty minutes into my shift, and then we had to wait for the boss to show up so we could deactivate the door.