YES! Charge People For Wasting Your Time!

I ran a comic and card store in the 1990s. One fine afternoon, I was doing some organizing and straightening up, and I saw an SUV pulling up in front of my store. The mother driving proceeded to drop off her two kids and drive off.

“Not a big deal,” I thought. “She must be going to park and will be right in.” Well, I was wrong.

After a few minutes, I asked the older kid where their mother was.

Older Kid: “She went shopping.”

My store was in a strip mall and a supermarket was on the other side of the mall.

After thirty minutes, I started to get a little annoyed as I had to go to the post office and I couldn’t toss these two out; they were six and seven years old.

After an hour, I had to go to the bathroom, and I couldn’t leave them alone on the floor as they might damage something. At least they were well-behaved, but I couldn’t risk it.

After ninety minutes, I got mad. I looked in the parking lot for the SUV but couldn’t see it from my door. Of course, the parent didn’t even give her kids a couple of quarters to play a video game.

After two hours, she pulled up and honked, and the kids went running with me right behind.

Me: “That will be $20.”

Mother: *Sneering* “For what?!”

Me: “Babysitting — $10 an hour for two hours. I’m giving you a discount because the kids were so well-behaved.”

Mother: *Snorting* “This is a store for kids.”

Me: “Yes, a store. You didn’t even give your kids a quarter to play a video game. I had things I had to do and couldn’t get them done because I couldn’t leave with them here.”

Mother: “There’s nothing here I want them to buy! We won’t be coming back.”

Me: “That wouldn’t bother me in the slightest, since you don’t respect my business enough to not just leave your kids here.”

Their father did bring them in a few times after that. The shame was that the kids did like me, as I treated them with respect and didn’t just throw them out.

Their mother did tell people how rude I was, but these people knew that I could be sarcastic but never rude. She was known to be a pain in the a**.

You may wonder why I didn’t call the police, but this was the nineties, and that wasn’t really done at the time. Parents did leave their kids places sometimes. The other reason is that I didn’t get along with the city particularly well for various reasons.