Bad Retail Slave Encounter at Hellmart

Hey RHU, long time no post. 

I've been busy being unemployed, a single mommy to the world's best behaved baby (knock on wood), and full time student, but I still try to catch up during Finance class. What, it's the only thing that keeps me awake!

Now I'm reaching out to RHU to answer my question. What the hell did I do wrong?!

Early on Black Friday evening, like way, way before the sales started and where the store was still empty, Baby Sisu was needing his teething stuff and I'd left his stuff at my mum's. Lovely.

So we cruised Hellmart and ran into Baby Sisu's father which prompted brief tears. To placate Baby S, I cruised down an empty toy section to get Christmas ideas and because Baby S likes to look. I make it a rule that we rarely touch the toys, and if we do, we ALWAYS put it back. It's the cardinal rule of shopping, dammit.

Anyway, we looked at the kiddie books and when the little man picked one he liked, I read it to him. Two days prior, I had to take back a book I bought because it was horribly and noticeably grammatically incorrect, so I learned to read before purchasing. We're talking like 10 pages of Thomas the Tank Engine crap with a 9 month old's attention span. Definitely no camping out or anything. He looked at the pictures and didn't rip anything, no tearing, and hands were surprisingly clean. Nothing went in the mouth and he was calm and quiet. He dropped the book and I immediately put it back.

No worries, right? Well, the toy sales associate kept walking by shooting me dirty looks. Seriously, what the hell? Is there some kind of anti-book-previewing taboo that I broke?

I fucking smiled at that bitch when she walked by only to find out from a mutual friend that she spent lunch hour bitching about me being there. I don't know her at all, never even talked to her, but apparently she knows me by sight well enough to bitch about me and my Angel Spawn. 

What did I do wrong?

May all the spawn be heavenly and the grownups not be assfaces,

--Sisu

 

Comments

[MahiMahi]

Don't worry. You did NOTHING wrong at all. That retail slave shouldn't have been shooting you nasty looks. What makes it worse was that she mouthed off about you. Although, it's probably because she is so used to seeing people with their children completely ripping things apart/ripping pages/breaking things/WHATEVER, she assumed your baby would start doing so as well, even if he wasn't doing it at the time.
She's probably also had the "Lovely" experience of confronting some parents and having them jump down her throat HOW DARE YOU SAY THAT ABOUT MY SWEET LITTLE ANGEL THEY'RE JUST A BABY OR THEY'RE JUST "So and so age" THEY DON'T KNOW ANY BETTER RAWR.
One other thing it maybe is that she HAD to do that. I wouldn't be surprised if some superiors decided that whenever there were children in those sections, there should be a slave there to make sure nothing gets destroyed. So then maybe she was just annoyed she had to keep "patrolling" there? Then later bitched about it to a friend, In which case, I could see why she could have been annoyed(having to patrol and all) but she had no rights to shoot those dirty looks/say those things.
Anyway, don't worry about it too much.
On a side note, I'm pretty sure they have these lil fabric books for babies you son's age, and they have all sorts of little thingys on them that he can chew on. And then maybe he would enjoy this:
http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3616817

[MahiMahi]

Damn...that is one long ass comment.....

[grmrsan]

Sounds like guilt by association. So many parents abuse the previews and let their kids be brats, she probably just assumed you were one, and hitched accordingly.

[Sisu]

@MahiMahi - Thanks for the link!! I need a stocking stuffer and that looks perfect. I think it'll help him feel better and me not get bit constantly.

[Dev]

Could it have something to do with Baby Sisu's father??

[smhfh]

She didn't say anything bad to you did she? She should be able to vent at work to her co-workers.

[Dev]

@smhfh for what? looking at a book she might buy?

[many bells down]

@Dev - that's what I was thinking. Any chance Saleslady has a thing for Baby Sisu's daddy?

[Humor_Me]

I used to go through and test out all of the interactive books or look through all of the books before I bought them for my kids. My kids NEVER damaged a product. We had specific rules about what they were allowed to do and what they weren't. (hitting all of the test buttons on the toy emergency vehicles were encouraged, I'm afraid *hangs head in shame*) But banging on anything, opening packages, pulling things loose, or dragging it around the store is totally prohibited.

[TechDeath]

Hitting all the buttons on one each of the toys isn't so bad, hitting all the buttons on all of the toys as they walk down the aisle is what drove me completely insane.