When Loss Prevention Tries To Prevent Lost Children

I work in a store. A young girl, about three to five years old (I’m horrible at guessing ages) has lost her parent(s). I find her standing in a corner, scared and crying. I take her to customer service, where we try to get her to talk to us. I have to get one of my Spanish-speaking managers to help out because I’m not sure she speaks English.

We are asking for her name, who she is with, etc. By company rule, we cannot give out her name over the intercom; we have to say we have a lost mommy/daddy. The poor girl won’t talk, though. All we get out of her is “Papi,” so we figure we’re looking for a daddy.

So, the paging begins.

Page: “Attention, shoppers! We have a lost daddy in the store. If it’s you, your child is located at customer service. Please pick the child up quickly.”

Five minutes come and go, and there’s still no sign of the father. We try calling for both mommy and daddy, thinking the girl (who still isn’t talking) wants to go home to “Papi” but is really with mommy.

Still no sign of a parent.

We pass the ten-minute mark and have to call up loss prevention. Somewhere in our company rules, it says that if a child is separated from their parent for over ten minutes, police have to be notified. We’ve never had to call before because parents normally pick up their children ASAP.

Our loss prevention employee says to wait a little bit longer (I’m sure he just doesn’t want to fill out forms, lazy punk) because it’s busy and pretty loud.

All I am thinking is that if these parents don’t realize their child is missing by now, they’ve got issues. But, it could be [Parent #1] thought the child was with [Parent #2] and vice-versa; we’ve had that before.

So… another thirty minutes go by and still no sign of the parent. This poor child is crying her eyes out, and I feel really bad. My manager lets me ring out a lollipop for her to try to calm her down, and we hope it will bribe her to talk to us, but alas, nada.

We’re paging every two to five minutes for this parent. LP finally has to make the call to the police. After all, I am not the store’s babysitter, but since I found her, I feel obligated to stay with her rather than hand her over to a bunch of new strangers.

Police arrive and have us page a few more times. They try to get names from the poor girl, but she isn’t talking. Figures, parents push “Don’t talk to strangers” in their kids’ heads, but they forget to mention “unless you need to tell the police or retail worker your name or our name so you can be reunited with us.”

An hour after finding this girl, the police take her to the police station. My heart nearly breaks for this poor girl. Before she leaves, I bring her a few snacks because I’m not sure how long she will be there and have no idea what kind of food/snacks the station has.

Two hours later, this guy comes strolling up to customer service asking us if we know where his daughter is. His description of his child matches the poor girl right down to her shoelace color. I have the pleasure of telling him she is at the police station.

This guy flips!

Worthless Parent: “Why the f*** did you call the police?!” 

Me: “We paged for over an hour, nearly two hours ago.”

Worthless Parent: “Well, I wasn’t in the store then!”

Me: “Wait… What? Where were you?”

Worthless Parent: “I had business to attend to. What the f*** is it to you?”

Me: “And you left your child here alone?!”

Worthless Parent: “Yeah, so? It’s a public place. I told her to stay in the corner and not talk to anyone! Now where the f*** is my daughter?!”

Me: “Haven’t you heard of kidnappers? Jeez, dude… Like I said, she is at the police station. You will have to go there to pick her up.”

After a few more moments of him ranting about my horrible customer service, I finally snap:

Me: “Sir, you are a worthless, irresponsible parent, and I sincerely hope that the police give your daughter to someone more suitable. Now get out of my store.”

He finally left, shouting a few more choice curse words.

I called the police station after he left and told the officer who was with her what the dad had said. He promised to handle it.

My manager, the LP guy, and I were seething after that. All three of us are parents and couldn’t even comprehend the stupidity of this guy. 

The police officer did come back into the store later, and he wasn’t able to tell me much, just the standard, “Things are being looked into.” But he did thank me for finding the girl and bringing the whole matter to the police, so I am guessing there might be more to it, and I’m praying that the little girl is taken out of her father’s custody.