Call CPS
Jessica messaged me a while back with a great story that inspired today’s comic:
“I wanted to share a really funny (in that “what is the world coming to?” way) story about something that happened in the kids department in my store not too long ago.
I was cleaning up kids and saw a mom with her infant talking to a friend. I wasn’t paying much attention to them, but as I was walking by, the mom sits her infant on top of some books on an endcap. Instantly, the little plexi shelf snaps under the weight and the books plus the baby DROP. The mom caught the baby by the arm and the baby is screaming bloody murder. I run over, my eyes seriously popping out of my skull, exclaiming, “Oh my god is she okay? Those shelves are not chairs!”
The mom hugs her baby to her like I’d rip the baby from her arms, looks at my with the nastiest look I’ve ever seen, and says haughtily, “It was just an accident. A MISTAKE.”
I replied, “I know, but is she okay? Can I get some ice or something?”
She glared daggers at me and said, “I don’t need your help, but you should clean up that broken plastic before someone gets hurt stepping on it. It’s a hazard.”
Tired of the attitude because frankly I thought she was the world’s biggest idiot for thinking it was safe to put her child on the display in the first place, I snapped, “Right, let me pick that up for you. These things really aren’t meant for babies, you know. That’s why we put books on them instead.”
I cleaned up the mess while she told her friend what horrible people work in the store and how she would never return. She then reported my attitude to my manager, my favorite manager, who had a good laugh with me as we mutually agreed it would be a miracle if that baby survived infancy with a mom like that. I never did see her again, thank goodness. And there you have my most incredulous moment of bad parenting in kids. It even trumps the time a woman argued with me when I told her she couldn’t change her babies diaper on the floor of the kids section. She apparently thought a bathroom that is cleaned daily is dirtier than a carpet that gets cleaned once a year.
Thanks again for the story, Jessica!
