Some Parents Are Way Too Comfortable Leaving Their Kids With Strangers

We have a customer who leaves her five kids in the DVD department of our store watching the big screen that’s usually playing the newest release while she does her shopping. She usually leaves an older sibling to look after the younger ones. The oldest is about eleven and the youngest is just a few months old. We put calls out asking the mother to return to her children, but she never does. She’s done it a few times, but the store is always so busy that I can’t catch her.

Once, one of the kids is running around and falls, hitting his head. I search the whole store for their mother, and I find her sitting in the customer cafe having lunch and chatting on her phone.

Me: “Ma’am, I need you to return to your children.”

Customer: “You’re interrupting my Me Time! I’ll get my kids when I’m done.”

Me: “One of your children hurt himself.”

She looks me straight in the eyes and says:

Customer: “You should have watched him better!”

I am pissed.

Me: “Ma’am, we are not a free daycare. If you don’t return to your children, I will call the police and say that the children have been left in the store alone.”

She huffs and storms off to her children. She sees her son’s bumped head and demands my manager.

My manager comes over, and he is on my side.

Manager: “Ma’am, you are at fault here for leaving minors alone. It isn’t my employee’s job to babysit your children. In the future, if you ever leave your children alone here again, you will be banned from the store.”