Chocolate Stains.

I work for a bridal clothing chain.  No, I'm not going to say the name of the company, but they do have commercials on tv nationwide, in Canada and Puerto Rico.  There's a very good chance that you've been to one.  Some studies suggest that 80% of people with ovaries will visit it at some point.

When I started working there, I was often shocked at the things I saw happen in the store, and the stories I heard about nightmare brides, nightmare attendants, nightmare moms...

And more than a year and a half later, I'm still shocked by the crazyass behavior I witness almost daily.

Like people who don't realize that a bridal salon isn't the most appropriate place to take a small child.

My first day on the job, a kid took a dump in a corner.

Three months in, I caught an unattended toddler right before he toppled off a bridal platform ledge.  His mom was in a fitting room, and when she came out, she screamed at me for touching her child.  (After I caught him, I sat him down and gave him paper and a crayon.  When she finally came out of the fitting room, I was sitting a few feet away, just keeping an eye on him.)

And yesterday a bride came in with her four children.  They had just come from dairy queen and every one of them was holding a half-eaten chocolate dip cone.  Every one of them had a chocolatey face and sticky, chocolatey hands.  And before I could catch them, they all followed mom into the bridal racks where they proceeded to touch everything.

When I caught up to them and got mom's attention, showed her a fresh chocolate stain on a $1000 gown and asked that the kids finish their ice cream in the reception area before looking at the dresses, she stared at me and said 'well, I can tell you that mark isn't from my kids.'  I was speechless, but one of her girls piped up and said 'yes it was, mommy, it was David!'  And then David looked at me and said 'I'm sorry, my hands are sticky.'  The customer herded the kids out of the store pretty quickly, but after they left you could hear her yelling at the kids in the parking lot about touching things.  I was disappointed.  I mean, they didn't have to leave.  We weren't going to make her pay anything for the damaged dress.  I just wanted her to look at her kids, see the ice cream, and say, 'Hey, guys.  Let's finish our ice cream before we look at dresses.' 

I'm not hating on kids.  Or parents that take their kids on errands.  Your job as a parent is to teach your kids how to act in the world, and that means you have to expose them to it.  And kids, well, they have shorter attention spans, shorter tempers, and need supervision.  You can't blame them for that.  And for every incident with a child in the store, there are 10 kids you don't even notice because they are being parented.  But I will never understand taking your kids somewhere and then treating them like an annoyance or pretending they don't exist.  That shit is bananas.