Retail workers often deal with situations far outside their job description.

Imagine working at a store when a mom drops off her elementary age child and walks away.

Would you help the boy shop, run after the mom, or ignore the situation and go about your job as usual?

In this story, a woman was working at a sports merchandise store when a parent left their young child alone to shop.

She assisted the child with his shopping, and everything seemed perfectly fine.

Then the mother came back with the child and was really upset.

Read the full story below for all the details.

I run a store, not a daycare

I work at a sports-themed store that sells merchandise for the local professional team.

Most parents seem to think that I also have proper equipment for said sport.

There are a lot of stories there.

They often drop their kid at my store while they shop the rest of the mall.

This woman saw a woman leave her kid at the store before walking out.

One day, a mom leaves her kid (looked to be about 8 or 9) at the door and runs off.

This is after Christmas (probably the 30th or so if memory serves). So the kid has some spending money he probably got from his family for Christmas.

He wanders the store for a while before noticing some hats.

She treated the little boy like a real customer.

My store’s policy is to treat everyone as a customer, so I walk over to the kid and talk to him a bit.

I’m not really trying to push a sale like I might if he were an adult, but I have to tell him about our sales and such, one of which is a deal on the hat he likes.

Eventually, the kid brings the hat to me along with some other novelty items and asks me to ring him out.

The boy bought $30 worth of products from the store.

I know this kid probably won’t care about most of this stuff in a day, but he wanted to buy it so I had to sell it to him.

He buys roughly $30 worth of stuff and leaves to find his mom.

Now, that the background info is in place the real story starts.

The boy’s mom came back and confronted her.

Mom comes back, kid in tow, and finds me instantly.

It’s important to note that I was one of three workers at the time, but she singled me out anyway.

Mom: How dare you?

Me: Pardon?

Mom: What makes you think it’s okay to take advantage of a child like that?

The mom said that she tricked the little boy.

Me: I haven’t taken advantage of anybody, ma’am. I’m not sure what the problem is here.

Mom: You tricked my son into buying your crap with all his Christmas money! I want you to refund all this stuff for him.

Me: I didn’t trick him. He asked me to check him out.

She explained to the mom that she runs a store and not a daycare.

At this point, the kid speaks up and confirms what I’m saying (rock on, kid!).

But Mom is still not having it.

Mom: And then, you just let him leave? He’s just a kid.

Me: Ma’am, I just run a store. We are responsible for our merchandise, not children. I didn’t think to stop him from wandering off because he seemed a capable and responsible kid.

She told her that if she needed a babysitter, she should have gone to the daycare center.

Mom: He could have gotten lost or hurt because you let him leave.

Me: Ma’am, we are just a store. If you’d like to return your son’s items I would be happy to help you with that. But if you need a babysitter, I suggest you go to the daycare across the road.

They ended up leaving the store with all the stuff the boy bought.

She got a little more grumpy and probably said more stuff, but it kind of fizzled out from there.

Another manager came over to see what the problem was at that point, which might have helped the mom cool off, too.

She ended up leaving with all the stuff the kid bought and I haven’t seen them again.

Let’s find out what others have to say about this on Reddit.

This person commends the child.

Yes, indeed!

Uh oh! Here’s a possible response to the mother.

Stupid mother, says this person.

Lol. Would love to know if this is true though.

You can’t just leave your child at a store and expect people to babysit them.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.