I work in a library. We used to have a young teenager who would walk to our facility in the summers with her five much younger brothers and sisters. They would spend all day, from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm, terrorizing the staff and other patrons. Their parents didn’t send them with any food, drinks, or diapers.

On multiple occasions, I had to make them get down from the top of bookcases as they ran along them and even tried to jump the five feet between rows!

In 2016, my paternal great-grandfather passed in his sleep. Out of my siblings, only my youngest sister and I went to the viewing where the casket is left open for people to pay respects. My sister was only five at the time and, as it is with many small children, she had no filter whatsoever.

As we were walking toward the casket to pay our respects, my sister saw my great-grandfather’s head from her viewpoint and just had to share this little gem of a comment.

Sister: “Why is there a head in that box?”

She said it extremely loudly. Cue the family that already hates my siblings and me glaring daggers at us.

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.”

When I was really little, my mom and I ordered dessert at a restaurant. I wanted the chocolate mousse because I thought it would be an actual, small chocolate moose. When a little boring bowl of chocolate showed up, I was visibly disappointed.

My mom didn’t complain, of course, because kids are stupid, and I had learned my lesson.

But the waiter noticed my moose-less despair, asked what was wrong, and then took the mousse back, poured it into tinfoil, and shaped it into a little moose head for me.

Happy child!

He got a huge tip.

A customer came in and allowed her child to lean against a floor-to-ceiling glass display case, repeatedly pushing herself off with her hands and falling back against the glass.

Me: “Ma’am, please don’t let your child do that; it’s dangerous.”

The woman immediately took offence and flounced out, saying to her child:

Woman: “We’re not coming here again. We are going somewhere more child-friendly!”