Kids love doing silly things, including being pushed fast in a cart by their parent.

Of course, kids often don’t know how to determine danger, so they have to trust their parent to do the right thing.

A worker at the furniture store in this story saw a parent playing with his kid in a very dangerous way, so he told him to stop and said it was stupid, which upset the parent and resulted in a lot of yelling.

I got into a shouting match with a customer

So, this happened yesterday. It’s my first real confrontation with a customer beyond the normal “please don’t do that thing that’s against the rules” conversation.

This is getting interesting already.

I’ll say up top, as an employee, I should not have used the word “stupid.”

However, I didn’t pause long enough to remember I needed to react as an employee, and instead reacted as a community member who saw a child in a dangerous situation.

I think we all know what store this is.

I work at a furniture store. Swedish and blue. If you’re not familiar, you buy the furniture in boxes and build it yourself. We have specific carts (flat carts) to carry your heavy boxes on.

So, I’m trying to leave the warehouse floor to go to lunch. I see a young guy, who I thought was probably 16 with a much younger brother, running down an aisle pushing a flat with two boxes and a young child.

That sounds fun, but it can definitely be dangerous.

The setup is one box on the cart, one box leaning upright between the handles of the cart, and a 3-4 year-old kid laying on top of the bottom box but under the leaner. Not a good spot. So I immediately react, “Absolutely not!”

The adult (almost adult?) stops the cart and leans down to the kid, “Oh, sorry buddy. You gotta get off now.”

This is very reasonable.

I then tell him, “And I need you to not be running around with a full cart.”

Now, honestly, I couldn’t remember what exactly the guy said here if you offered me a million dollars.

Ok, this is a bit unprofessional, but still true.

But I know he pushed back on my stopping their “fun” because I responded by pointing at the cart and saying, “Because that’s a stupid decision.” (Talking about having a small child lay down between two heavy boxes while you push it as fast as you can go.)

He did not like my calling him out. “Okay. Hate all you want, but I would NEVER tell my son something is a stupid idea.” (Son?! I didn’t see that one coming.)

This guy is not letting it go.

I started to walk away then but he follows me into the walkway yelling, “Great idea. Call your customers stupid.”

He’s causing a bigger scene than necessary so I turned back and told him, “I didn’t call you stupid. I was telling you that that was a bad idea. What if he was under there and that box slipped and fell on him?!”

And just to prove his point…

Y’all, I’m not exaggerating here. The SECOND I finished that sentence, the box in question slipped from is propped position and fell exactly where the kid had been laying. I have witnesses on that timing.

At this point, I’m imploring this guy to realize the risk he was taking with his kid’s safety. I raised my voice above his tirade and gesture at the fallen box, “What if he was still under there?!”

He only wasn’t because this worker put an end to it!

This guy has the AUDACITY to shoot back, “He wasn’t, though.”

As if he has grounds to claim responsibility for his son not being between those boxes anymore. Like it wasn’t entirely my doing.

This ‘parent’ will never know how lucky he was.

So I shouted back, “Because I made him get off!” And then I walked away and left him yelling after me and trying to bring other customers into it.

A coworker told me that he even turned to his kid and said, “Can you believe she called us stupid?!”

This worker may have saved a life. And got yelled at for it.

And that’s what I have the biggest problem with. I didn’t call anyone stupid. However you want to interpret my using the word in the first place is up to you.

But this preschooler had no blame in this situation and I absolutely didn’t address him even once.

Talk about bad parenting.

That guy basically told his young child that he was at fault and that a random adult called him stupid. If you’re so concerned with your kid not being told he’s stupid, console him.

Don’t follow around and yell at a stranger then bring him into it like he’s an equal participant.

Maybe it was a bad choice of words, but it was still true.

As I said at the beginning, I should have said “bad” or “terrible.” But I won’t feel bad about keeping a young kid from getting very hurt.

I told my manager exactly what happened and he basically said to pay attention to wording.

Sounds like a good manager.

But he’s never going to tell us not to say anything if we see a dangerous situation.

The bottom line is some people are stupid and do stupid things, they should be called out for it.

Read on to see if the people in the comments have anything to say about it.

Yeah, parents are often terrible.

Exactly, he definitely would have sued.

This commenter makes a good point.

Yeah, people do stupid stuff all the time.

This is just crazy.

Getting yelled at for protecting a child.

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.