Saw a kid get run over by a shopping cart today

[jmowreader]

One of my bigger frustrations is people letting their kids ride on the front of shopping carts.

And even worse: when you ask them to get their kids off the cart, they blow you off or chew you out.

So I'm walking down the aisle today on the way to lunch and I see this cart with three children hanging off it. One on the front, one on each side. And naturally, I do my duty and nicely ask them to have the children step off the cart. I got screamed at by this one...how dare I tell her she can't have her children ride on the cart.

It was a good warm day today, just perfect for getting sweaty hands. About fifteen seconds after I got my ass chewed, the kid on the front slipped off and fell on the floor. And she then ran over him. And then she freaked out and slammed the cart into one of the endcaps...which pinned the kid on the right side of the cart between the cart and a stack of 5-gallon buckets of paint.

O great. Now I got two screaming kids on my hands, a mother yelling at me to "get away from her" (hey, no problem, I just picked up the phone on the rack and reported the incident to the manager)...lots of fun.

The good news is that no one was hurt, just shaken up. I stood there for about five minutes, out of the line of fire from this woman, just to make sure there was no blood coming out of anyone's ears or anything serious like that.

The bad news is that as soon as the kids calmed down, she had them climb right back on the fucking cart and down the aisle they went.

Who did I piss off to deserve this?

[Brigid]

1. In the words of Ron White . . .

You can't fix stupid. :banghead:

[AirmensMom]

2. She must've vote for * ... twice.

:banghead:

[jmowreader]

4. This is a military town. She could have voted for him four times

Being that Texas is full of army bases, if she was a Texan who married into the military she could have voted for dipshit twice for governor and twice for pResident.

If that's not a frightening thought, I don't know what is.

[AirmensMom]

5. That's pretty scary!

:scared: But ... don't assume all military people voted for him. My military kids didn't. :bounce:

It's pretty scary how irresponsible that lady is with her kids. I always lose it when I see kids standing in the front seat of a moving car, leaning forward with their hands on the dashboard.

:wtf: :scared:

[Deja Q]

3. That's what society is becoming to.

Just wait for those in power to openly use those situations to help explain offshoring and what's going on.

Of course, if people felt there was a future, there'd be fewer incidents of rudeness, suicides, murders, and anything else bad you can think of.

[MissB]

6. You obviously pissed off the shopping cart God.

I'm just not sure what sort of sacrifice is required to please him.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

7. She obviously doesn't give a shit about her kids.

It's called child abuse. If we're at all lucky, none of them will procreate. What a stupid woman.
Duckie

[progmom]

14. No, if we're lucky, they will learn from their horrible treatment...

...as children, and if/when they do have their own kids, they will be the kind of loving parents they never had.

(just trying to stay positive. ;))

[Starbucks Anarchist]

8. Reminds me of an incident I had yesterday.

I was at the grocery store, and throughout my trip, I noticed one kid riding around on one of those roller skate/shoe hybrids.

He was riding all over the place at high speeds, and his father didn't seem to care too much. On my way out, I parked my cart next to the instant lotto ticket machine -- there was about two feet of space between my cart and the machine.

Lo and behold, who should fly through that tiny space but the kid on skates. He came through with no warning at all, and if I had moved my cart another few inches before I could even see him, he would have taken a huge shot to the head.

Of course, I also blame the father. Those roller skate shoes are nice, but why the hell would you let your kid ride around in them in a freaking grocery store?

[jmowreader]

9. They let their kids ride around in them in freaking Home Depot too!

I got another shopping cart horror story from today. Two dipshits came from church to the store wearing very expensive clothing and lots of crosses, Jesus fish and other BT accoutrements. They brought their uncontrollable kids with them. One of them amused himself with opening the sandpaper in the tool department and throwing it all over the place. The other one got a shopping cart (the kind that looks like a grocery cart) and used it as a skateboard. He got behind the cart, shoved it as hard as he could for about three aisles, then jumped on the back and rode. O fuck. I mean, it's not like we drive lift trucks in the building or have customers pushing carts with six or seven hundred pounds of lumber piled on them.

So I notice this and am running up to correct the situation when I hear this huge crash and a guy screaming at the top of his lungs "WHOSE FUCKING KID IS THIS?" Our little skateboarder lost control of his cart and ran smack into someone. Double fuck.

The someone he ran into was this big biker-looking guy. Not Hells Angels, fortunately--they always wear their colors--but affiliated with someone. And he was fucking pissed. I got about three managers there in a minute (there's a special call we use that brings them flying).

Results:

* Big biker guy was buying a faucet. We gave it to him as our way of apologizing.
* Idiot fundies got whatever they needed from Lowe's because we threw them out of the building.

[Starbucks Anarchist]

10. Damn.

Good story. :thumbsup:

[Oeditpus Rex]

11. You realize, of course

that now the AFA and the 700 Club and all those types are gonna stage an economic boycott of HD.

It's God's Will.

[Kerrytravelers]

21. What are "BT accoutrements?" Never saw this before.

Thanks! :hi:

[jmowreader]

28. "BT" = "Bible Thumper"

BT accoutrements are all the Jesus-themed bling-bling today's Christian-in-name-only adorns him/herself with to let you know that they're Christians because they sure as HELL don't ACT in a way pleasing to Jesus Christ.

We have one of these people on staff. Let's go through her BT accoutrements:

Three holes in each earlobe, two in each cartilage. You will find crosses, fish, and "Jesus!" earrings in the piercings.

Big cross necklace.

Two big Jesus fish pins on her apron, along with four small ones (yes, she has four children).

She found some clothing buttons shaped like crosses somewhere. She's cut all the secular buttons off her clothes and replaced them with these.

Several Scriptures tattooed onto her body--all this fire-and-brimstone stuff.

An "I Love Jesus" tattoo. This one's kinda original in that I've never seen this exact piece before. It looks like New York's I Love New York with the heart...but instead of NY it says JC.

She is also one of the most vicious people you'll ever meet. So much for the teachings of Jesus.

[Kerrytravelers]

34. Wow. That sure is a lot of visible love for the Lord.

Shame it isn't on the inside, too.

It's funny, I'm a Christian, although I no longer feel welcomed in church. I have never felt the need to slap a fish or a "I pray, get use to it" sticker or anything else on me. I do own a small delicate cross that my mother gave me on my 16th birthday that I occasionally wear. I guess I just never felt the need to make sure everyone in the room and everyone on the freeway know that I'm a Christian. I suppose no one cares that my boss is a Jewish carpenter. I don't see a lot of signage from people of other faiths- or no religious faith at all- anointing their cars. Why are Christian- in particular American fundamentalist Christians who are so damn full of hate- also so damn obnoxious?

[KurtNYC]

23. Or at the Met

Last time I was at the Met, a kid zips past me on roller shoes, goes right between a priceless ancient Egyptian vase and a figurine on a pedastal. Makes me glad I'm not a museum guard.

[driver8]

31. You weren't by any chance at the Von's in La Crescenta, were you?

I saw a kid on shoe skates on Saturday zipping around...I think his sister was pulling him.

[Starbucks Anarchist]

43. No, Pavilion's in Burbank.

[XemaSab]

12. As long as no-one got hurt

You just have to accept it as proof that there IS a God, and He has a pretty good sense of humor!

[jmowreader]

13. I'm worried that someone's going to kill their kid in a store

It's thoroughly possible.

About a week ago I was helping a guy load some 3/4" plywood onto one of the stand-up lumber carts. This product weighs about 60 pounds per sheet. The customer had his wife and two crotch-height sons with him, and both of them wanted to sit on the cart. While we were putting the wood on the cart. This man kept telling his children to not get on the cart and they didn't want to listen. Finally, one of them got on the cart on the same side we were dropping the lumber. I was able to grab the sheet before the kid got squished...I'm still feeling that one.

"Are you okay?"
'Yes, but I'm not loading any more wood on this cart until your wife takes both of your sons to another aisle.'

And I can't tell you how many times I've just about run over children with my cart when I go to Petsmart. I've actually done it once, not on purpose but they still got hit. (You're back in the cat food area with a pile of cat stuff in your cart, someone walks past with a Great Dane, three knee-high kids start running toward it yelling "puppy, puppy," you don't see 'em shoot out of the aisle, squish.) Helpful hint, smart shoppers: never, ever go to a pet store on a Saturday unless you're willing to drag the cart around by the front.

Sometimes you get children who actually have discipline. More often than not, you don't. I really don't understand it.

We play various announcements on our PA system, and one of them is on child safety. It starts out, "At Home Depot we care about the safety of your children." I sometimes wish I was a computer hacker so I could add "and it would be really nice if you did too."

[CanuckAmok]

15. A kid did get killed in Toronto a few years ago.

I can't remember the store, but it was one of the big box retailers. Maybe it was Ikea? Anyway, the kid was running around like an idiot, completely unsupervised, and one of the staff stopped him and tracked his parents down. They told the parents to keep an eye on him and keep him under control. Parents got pissed at the staff and chewed them out. Kid resumes running around like a jerk.

About an hour later he got crushed by a heavy box of stuff falling off a shopper's buggy. Killed instantly.

Of course, the parents sued, but because they had been told to subdue their kid and didn't the Court didn't support their claim. There was security camera footage of the staff talking to the parents and them yelling back, and several customers who had been in the store for a while testified that the kid wasn't being controlled, despite staff warnings to him and his parents.

It wss pretty sad, because it was a lose/lose situation, but sheesh, cautionary tale!

[XemaSab]

16. Gruesome!

[Coventina]

17. I'm glad the parents didn't win. The fact that they sued prevents me from

feeling any sympathy for them.

They were warned. They chose to ignore the warning. Then they have the nerve to sue?

This might sound really insensitive, but the kid is better off dead than with parents like that.

[Book Lover]

25. I know we say lots of shit here in the Lounge

But you might want to rethink the strength of your words. Signed, someone who saw their 13-year old nephew die.

[Kerrytravelers]

27. I missed that last line on the first read through.

Perhaps you meant that the child would have been better off with different parents, not that the kid is better off because they died.

The parents may be idiots, but the death of a child is beyond anything a parent should have to bear. I watched my in-laws suffer when my brother-in-law died and he was 33. I can not imagine what losing a young child would be like.

On the corner of our street, a police chase ended when the 26 year old girl in the stolen car hit a car carrying a man and his three year old son. The child died at the scene when the car plowed through a fence. Every day, all through the month of December, the parents and family stood on the corner, lighting candles and viewing the flowers, the gifts and the site where their child died. I had no person connection to this event, but seeing them suffer everyday was horrible. I can not imagine losing a child.

In high school, over a three year period, eight of my school mates died. Additionally, the four year old sister of a friend drowned in their backyard pool. I was part of a small group that was asked to sing at the funeral. Sitting kind of behind that casket and seeing the family suffer was something I will never forget.

I hope you didn't mean it the way it was written in your post. I trust that it was wrongly put and that you can repost your real intentions.

[driver8]

32. Wow...very powerful post.

I cannot imagine anything worse than losing a child. I have a four year old daughter and a two and a half year old son and they mean the world to me.

No one deserves for their child to die...no one.

[Kerrytravelers]

33. Sometimes, when I write a post, I know what I'm thinking in my head,

but it comes out wrong. I sincerely hope that the poster meant that the kid would have been better off with more sensible parents, not that the kid would be better dead.

Every word of my post is true. It sounds unbelievable that eight kids would die, but it happened. We had 2 suicides, 1 murder, 2 accidents and 3 illnesses. Needless to say, the school district psychology department actually moved locations from the district office to our high school for a period of time. It was really a strange occurrence. And since high school (about 10 years now) there have been several of my classmates who have died. I don't know how common or uncommon that is in regards to other people's experiences, but it seems that so many of my classmates have gone on. And in college and shortly thereafter, I knew three people who died. Recently, a young co-worker was killed in a freak car accident. It has been very difficult watching so many young people die. It has taught me to appreciate every moment that I have and to be kind to people and not just assume that I will see them again. It may sound a bit morbid, but it has softened me and made to value my good friendships and the good times in my life.

kt

[Coventina]

44. Okay, just to clarify my post, which you and others found offensive....

I actually was not trying to make light of tragedy.

I have had close friends and relatives lose children through accidents and illness and it is a terrible thing. The worst loss a person can go through, actually.

Having said that....there are worse things than death. We are all going to die sooner or later, from one cause or another. Frankly, I consider a miserable life to be worse than death.

This kid was headed for a miserable life. He had no discipline, and obviously his parents did not care about him.

Years ago, my dad hit a kid with his car. The kid had run out from in front of a city bus, and my dad never had the chance to stop. He went to the hospital emergency room and waited to hear the kid's condition (he was 14 and alone when he was struck). Everything turned out okay, thank God/dess.

However, the parents NEVER SHOWED UP!

Later, the cop called my dad and told him that when he called the dad at work and told him his son had been hit by a car, the dad asked, "Was he in a crosswalk?"

"No, he was nowhere near a crosswalk."

"Well, there goes the lawsuit."

HE NEVER ASKED THE CONDITION OF HIS SON! NEVER WENT TO THE HOSPITAL!

********************************************

You can disagree with me, that's fine. But I say, some things are worse than death. A child living a life where they know they are not loved.....
To me, that's worse than dying.

on edit: grammar

[JVS]

24. Great story

[MountainLaurel]

18. Ditto on that last graf

I've known librarians who, in the process of trying to keep a 2-year-old from diving off a stairwell while mommy was Web-surfing, ended up getting screamed at for touching the child and threatened with a lawsuit.

Frankly, I consider it the modern equivalent of "survival of the fittest." Eons ago, parents who didn't keep an eye on their kids didn't get their gene pool spread further because the kids all ended up eaten by wild animals.

[CanuckAmok]

29. are you suggesting libraries should house wild animals?

That would be sort of cool. No goats, though... they'd eat all the books.

[MountainLaurel]

35. Public librarians have enough weird duties at work

Animal husbandry shouldn't be one of them.

My general point were that kids who get killed because their parents weren't paying attention are the modern-day mastodon meal.

[CanuckAmok]

36. My friend majored in animal husbandry...

...until they caught him at it, that is.

[MountainLaurel]

39. Oh dear

In a related note, I got some whacked out search engine results trying to find information about my dog's vaginal infection. There's some scary folk out there.

:hide:

[JVS]

41. LOL

[Maddy McCall]

19. I love your Home Depot stories.

You know, you should have asked your manager to instruct her to leave the store, as soon as she put them BACK on the buggy.

Some people shouldn't be allowed to parent their children. :grr:

[populistdriven]

20. Thats why I always make my kids wear full hockey gear to HD

[Kerrytravelers]

22. Mr. kt and I are Disney pass-people. We're there at least once a month.

We see kids speeding around on those roller-shoe-hybrids. We see them run and cut in line and then scream at mom and dad for not cutting in line with them (at least the parents who don't jump in line with them- most do.) We see parent's screaming at "cast" members and demanding their precious little angel be allowed to hang upside down from Tarzan's Tree house. We have also seen two parents come to blows at Disney's California Adventure over who gets to be in the front of the Caterpillar Munch Coaster thing in A Bug's Life (apparently, each parental unit was told by a different employee that they could be in the front, even though none of them was at the front of the line.)

Personally, I wish businesses reserved the right to refuse services to parents whose children is presenting a safety issue to the other customers and I also wish they would have these parents removed. If this happened a few times across the country, I bet anything behavior would improve. This may seem hash but really, do you want to be a witness to a child being killed in a store, like mentioned above/ So you want to work someplace and almost kill a kid because the parents are letting them run wild (as also mentioned above.)

There are ways to teach your children to behave without destroying their childhood or crushing their self-esteem.

[skygazer]

26. I see this kind of shit at my grocery store

Saw a woman one day with three kids - one in the seat, one in the cart and one hanging off the SIDE of the cart. Give you one guess what happened - she left the kids to go wander down an aisle and the one on the side was bouncing around and the whole thing went over. Baby screaming, toddler in the cart screaming, mom screaming at larger kid who caused the whole thing and that kid just racing around like Calvin on a sugar high.

And the same ending - once all the hollering stopped, all the kids went right back on where they'd been and mom continued to pay absolutely no attention. :grr:

We also get the kids in the roller skate shoes. I run a wine and liquor department and I cringe when I see these little darlings zinging around my wine displays. Or the kids who walk along my aisle tap, tap, tapping on every bottle on the shelf - I've lost more than a few that way. I can't recall a single time when I've politely (and I always do it professionally and politely) asked the parent to keep an eye on junior because "I wouldn't want him/her to get hurt" that they haven't snapped back something rude, completely insulted that I'd have the nerve to expect them to parent their child.

Fucking neanderthals.

[ContraBass Black]

30. I messed around with the bottles once and broke a few when I was 5.

I didn't even see them hit the floor. That must have been hell for my mother.

[bertha katzenengel]

37. I dunno who you pissed off, but I'm glad you did. Wait - no, let me re-

let me rephrase that.

I LOVE reading your customer rants. Love. It. I don't know exactly where you work -- sounds like a gigantor home-improvement/hardware type place. I love those stores for what I can get at them but I DETEST going into them for the very things you describe. Mostly people in those stores are oblivious that there is anyone else in the place. Run over your feet with the cart, block the aisle, poke you in the back or smack you in the head with their lumber because they're not paying attention to where they're going...

Fun!

Anyway, I dig your rants. Thank you. :bounce:

[barb162]

38. It seems to me there are more and more parents like this around

[Kerrytravelers]

42. The teachers here will certainly agree to that!

We love the kids... but sometimes we just want to smack the parents! :evilgrin:

[Patiod]

40. Although sometimes cart accidents AREN'T the parent's fault

I felt horrible for this one mom with two little toddlers - one, who the mom had been holding onto all through the store, broke free at the line and ran off to knock over a display, and mom grabbed him, turning her back for just a second on the the younger one, who had until this point been sitting quietly in her little seat. Of course she chose this moment to stand up, and immediately took a header onto the linoleum. The mother was SO UPSET - I told her later she would have needed eyes in both sides of her head to catch that quick dive, and that I would have caught her if she hadn't dived so fast. The manager was upset, and people who hadn't seen the incident were glaring at her. But these two were so little, and it's tough to keep a 3-year-old boy completely under control - and he wasn't hanging on the cart, but had been marching along with mom like a good kid until the last minute.

The little girl was stunned, but looked okay.