I knew it was going to be a long day at Gymboree when the first thing I saw upon rounding the corner was a five-year-old kid in the doorway with his pants around his ankles.
The shift kicked off with my favorite song on the all-time waste of decibels known as the video that plays throughout the store. It's a vegetable garden singing about themselves to the tune of the Hallelujah Chorus. There's something tragic -- not to mention offensive -- about hearing "For the Lord God omnimpotent reigneth" reduced to "Brow-wn potato, brown potaaa-to." And the puppeteering was terrible.
Then there were the screaming babies whose mothers, shopping for all the deals they were worth, didn't bother even to approach the overladen strollers to shut their fricking kids up. Have I ever mentioned that I hate loud noise? I'm a Virgo, innate librarian, for a reason. I spent five hours strung tight as an overstretched rubber band wanting to either pick up and hold (after all, it's not the kids' fault they're stuck in strollers for HOURS) some children, or haul off and smack their whiny little asses. Neither of which is appropriate (or legal) in a retail worker's situation.
Blech. No reproduction for moi. Not for a good long while.
1 comment:
Your story reminds me of one day I had at Boscov's. I was running the register in the auditorium, a room off to the side of the main store where all the deeply discounted items were stuck. A woman came in with a stroller. I thought perhaps she was interested in getting 75% off on percale sheet sets, but instead she plunked her baby down in the middle of the floor and ripped off his diaper to change him. IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FLOOR! I was too shocked that she would actually do that to say anything. By the time I'd finally regained my voice, the deed was done and the woman, baby, and nasty diaper were all gone. I figured it was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing.
The very next day I was working in Toys when a man set his baby down on the Thomas the Tank Engine display and began to change his babies diaper. First of all, there are baby changing facilities in the restoooms. Second of all, little children like to play on that Thomas the Tank Engine display and we prefer is not be crawling with giardia. Please remove yourself to an appropriate location rather than forcing potential customers to flee the store gasping in nausea.
I complain about this to a female coworker and she got mad. Not at the customers who had been flinging dirty diapers all around the place, but at me. She was angry that I didn't understand how hard it is to raise children and sometimes you have to do things you don't want to do and so I needed to get of the these people's cases.
I confess that I don't have children and have no idea how to raise children. I don't even know how to change a diaper. But to me, there is just no circumstance where I need to force people out pleastly shopping to look at the little gift Johnny left for everyone in his diaper. Is it too much to ask to have you change you baby in the restroom? Surely that within the realm of commom decency.
Wow, that was quite a rant. Sorry about that, I'm not even sure what my point was. I think I was trying to say that children are okay, but sometimes the parents who are supposed to be raising them are pretty dumb.
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