Tuesday, July 27, 2010

What Would You Do?



You are in Staples looking for photo cards and paper and some other things when all of a sudden you're hit in the upper chest with something, you don't know what, til you look down and see a Rubik's Cube size cube of Post It Notes rolling away from you. "Jeez," you say, "that hurt!"

You step out of the aisle and see a small boy running away followed by a smaller little girl. You call out loud after him and her, "Hey that hurt! Did you throw that? " You realize the cube must have been thrown from the aisle next to you, up and over the top. The children ignore you.
Some tingling pain lasts a few minutes.

You see the boy and girl later when you're looking at covers for your Blackberry phone. They are running again. You watch them go.

At the cashier's you see them again with their mother and father. It would be easy to tap either kid on the shoulder and speak to them

WHAT DO YOU DO?

  • Speak harshly to them and show them where a black and blue mark is already developing;
  • Speak to the parents and tell them what their kids (the boy who was the oldest was probably the one who threw the cube) did;
  • Tell the manager what the kids did;
  • Tell the manager and expect some sort of compensation;
  • Do nothing.

If you can think of something else you'd do, write about that...

Put you answers in a comment, okay? I will tell you what I did at the end of the day tomorrow.

14 comments:

CACHANILLA73 said...

Oh my goodness!!! Hope you are ok... and well there is no easy answer. I have seen people loosing their neighborly manners and sometimes I am afraid to approach someone when I have a complain ( I have heard of a few shootings just because you express your opinion)

I would probably approach the parents and kids and with my best smile would ask if they were buying the cube and somehow proceed to tell the story to the parents without making any formal accusation about the kids.

Well I'll be waiting for the ending.

;)

EG CameraGirl said...

This is a tough one, MaryT. Sometimes I can be pretty shy and so I might not have said anything to the parents. (But I would have been ticked off so this is NOT the best answer.)

On the other hand, if I - like you - had seen the kids continue to wreak havoc, I think I would have approached the parents and asked them if they were aware of what their kids were up to and then tell them what they had done to me. If the parents didn't seem concerned, I then would have spoken to the manager.

Now I am curious. What did YOU do?

Rinkly Rimes said...

Not only have I solved your problem but I've advertised it! There should be a cyber-wide response!

http://rinklyrimes.blogspot.com/2010/07/ruined-by-rubix.html

J.G. said...

I say, trip 'em while you still have the chance.

But that's only in my pitiful revenge fantasy. In reality I would probably do nothing and let the universe sort it out.

Lady Demeter said...

Hard to tell what I would do.
Maybe I would tell the parents what their kids did.

lynda Howells said...

The politically correct answer would be, to go and speak to parents, explain what you think has just happened and ask it you can speak to children about it.
The other opion is to hit the living daylights out of the little b******d's!Ha..but l would never do that!!x lynda
Can't wait to see what you did and the reactions you recieved from parents and the children.
Hope your bruise is getting betterxlynda

Cherry Chick said...

Cynical me thinks that saying anything to anyone would be a waste of my breath and I'd just rely on the knowledge that "what goes around comes around".

Vicki ~ FL said...

Oh my goodness Mary, I think I would have said something to the parents... "Don't know if you realized your children were throwing things around the store but I was hit (quite hard) by a package of flying post-it notes and the only people around me were your children." That could have been pretty serious. What if it had hit someone in the eye, hit an elderly person and caused them to fall, or a number of other things?

Hope your bruise isn't too bad.

I'm going to check out Rinkly Rimes cyber responses:~)

BLOGitse said...

autch! So sorry that happen to you.
Last weekend we witnessed two kids running around the shop and their parents did nothing.
Shops (specially small ones with little space) are not playgrounds and that's what parents should teach their children.
Parents. Not teachers or police! :)

SnoopyTheGoon said...

I would say throw out the Blackberry and switch to iPhone, but I hate iPhone ;-)

Another (stray) thought: many a thinker proposed raising children separated of adults in isolated locations. Quite frequently I return to this capital idea...

Travis Cody said...

In the absence of any real injury, I do nothing.

Based on the scenario and facts as presented, I have no proof it was those kids. Besides, if the kids were left to their own devices in the store while their parents shopped, it would be meaningless to that family to say anything anyway. I have no interest in policing other people's children.

maryt/theteach said...

Snoopy keeping all kids in a kibbutz may be the right way to go... Ha!

I did nothing! I didn't know FOR SURE they were the kids that threw the cube of Post-It Notes... I also didn't want to embarrass the parents.

I have a VERY slight black and blue on my upper chest. :)

concretenprimroses said...

I think I would have spoken to the parents. But not being there its hard to say really.

I think the cynical comment is not correct. Most people do care about what their children are doing. On the other hand I read somewhere that a woman sued a store after she tripped over a child that was running wild and not being restrained at all by the parent. And the suing woman was the parent!

I have gotten a mean anonymous note from people who feel that dh and I did something wrong (driving too fast), and that is creepy. The note said they didn't dare to speak to us in person because they noticed when they came to our house to talk to us that we had bumper stickers on our cars and went into some psycho babble about how that means we are dangerous and don't care about what others think! (I do wonder how they noticed we were speeding without noticing the bumper stickers?, but dh has been more careful with how fast he goes.)
I always speak directly to people, especially my neighbors. If its not serious enough to go talk to someone directly about it, then I keep my mouth shut! Which I guess is what you did.
Hope your bruise is better. It is jarring to have something like that happen.
Kathy

Cherry Chick said...

I stand my ground..If those parents truly cared where their children were in the store then the incident would never have happened. I'd venture to say that they were not around when the object was thrown over the aisle that hit the woman. If they were caring parents they would have checked to see if anyone was hit by the object had they seen the incident. A second time the customer sees the children running freely in the store. Again, where are the parents.
As stated in another comment, she has no proof that it was "those" children. Based on the siting of the children running freely in the store not once but twice why would anyone think that the parents had concern over what their children were doing. My son is 38 years old now and he was by my side anytime we were out in a retail location when he was a child. I worked retail and saw too many children left to do whatever there little hearts desired in our store.
I seriously doubt the store manager would do anything other than apologizes for the children's behavior which he had no control over. My concern would be that someone who doesn't keep tabs on their children would then become defensive if it was pointed out to them. I'm not willing to take a chance on their reaction. Some...I repeat, some, people are just too unstable to risk confrontation with over this minor incident.
Had it required medical attention I would have been in the store managers face faster than you can say "lawsuit" but it didn't so just move on and save your breath.
It's my opinion...not a matter of correct or not correct.