In Which Mr. Argh meets A Horrible Parent
Hello. I am Mr. Argh. I work as a part-time employee at a chain of stores, CheapLand. Allow me to take you on a journey into the hell that my job can become.
It was a little over a week into this job that I met the Horrible Parent, and their Terrible Child. It was also when I met my friend Mister Gag Reflex, and became acquainted with biohazard procedures in the workplace.
Our store is small, sitting in a strip mall in a modest town. It isn’t backwoods, it isn’t Urban, it’s exactly what you think of when you think of a comfortable town, where the people are just a little behind the times, the elderly are kind but a bit irritating, and the weather conspires to make your day feel slightly uncomfortable.
On one side, a nice grocery. The other, a shop that sells bicycles, and the owner is known to, on holidays in the non-winter months, ride a unicycle playing his concertina around the park we hold the holiday celebrations in. He’s a regular, and I look forward to him stopping in, because he always has a new story.
CheapLand is not a terrible store. They have good prices, slightly under-quality goods in a few areas, but it is respectable enough. Most of our customers are polite, or at least don’t make trouble for us.
I was working on the registers during a slightly dead shift. If you’re on the registers, you help with stocking the small items up front. Nothing huge, make sure the impulse racks are neat, organize the DVDs and the book racks, maybe shelve some candies and gums and the occasional box of earbuds or pine-tree air fresheners.
A woman in a slightly too-loud pantsuit walks in, with her child, perhaps five or six, in tow. This is the Horrible Parent, and their Terrible Child. You can tell they were such, because no matter how loud this Child screamed, or how grabby the hands were for candy, or how well the sneezes were aimed at our food products, she just continued to talk on her cell phone. She spoke in a way slightly too loud to be considerate, but not loud enough to be shouting.
It was the volume of someone who thought they were Very Important. And they were talking to someone about Very Important Things, and could not be bothered to regulate their volume, because that, of course, was not quite so Important to someone who could wear a bright green pantsuit without feeling like a walking bottle of Sprite.
Of course, the behavior of their child was not so Important in the grand, storied scheme of the Very Important Things. So while the Horrible Parent underwent the arduous, intensely strenuous process of getting a basket off the stack right by the In door, and gathering the items they needed for their travels, the Terrible Child did what all children, Terrible or otherwise, first think of.
The Toy Aisle beckoned. And the Terrible Child answered its call.
Time passed, and more customers were rung through, the old ladies wrote their cheques for $8.39 worth of generic hard candies, and the tobacco cabinet was eyeballed, but ultimately unrequested by teenagers who knew their fake ID was not quite good enough, or their nerve was not quite strong enough.
And the Parent returned, and asked if we had a restroom. We did, but we rented one lot in this mall, shared with the bicycle shop next door, and so, only employees could use it, as the path to the bathroom was in the stock room, which also opened onto theirs. So I informed her no, but the Grocery next door did.
She huffed, and scoffed, and became irritated, but moved on. The Child was nowhere to be seen. Time passed, and the job proceeded.
Eventually, she payed, the Child running out ahead and into the Grocery, run by a slightly dickish gentleman, but he does well by his customers. Of course she purchased seven dollars of goods and payed with a fifty, but I could make change, and the store was empty.
Peace. Quiet. The option to un-sully the shelves, bring the products back into Order. And my manager was pleased, for she could put up the banners for the upcoming sale without worrying about the ladder being tipped over.
I pulled out a box of toys that needed shelving. As is customary, they were cellophane wrapped, for shipping. Garbage bag in hand, box knife in pocket, I went back.
And vomited into the garbage bag, for the Terrible Child had, at some time, laid a large, wet, black stool sample in the toy aisle.
Not in the Aisle, per se. He had the audacity to, somehow, get it on the second shelf up. My reaction summoned my manager, who let loose all manner of invective and noises of disgust.
For the next two hours, the store was without a Toy Aisle, and I learned the appropriate methods for dealing with body products and leavings of a similar nature in the store.
It was not until two hours later, when I was driving my slightly wonky third-hand Nova home, it occurred to me to wonder why the store had a standing policy for these events, and how, exactly, I would be dealing with this knowledge from then on.
That was two years ago, nearly to the day. My stories are legion, my liver has been taxed coping, and my tale is finished.
Until the next glimpse into Retail Purgatory,
I feel for you man, but this made me laugh so hard 😂 “a walking bottle of Sprite.” This is amazing. 10/10 would recommend
