Rules are rules, no matter who you are.

One employee, working a shift alongside a much younger coworker, noticed a toddler wandering barefoot through a food service area while his mother carried his shoes in hand without making any real effort to put them back on.

The employee decided to do his duty and jumped in with a quick, polite request to get the shoes back on. The mother wasn’t happy, but ultimately agreed.

The real problem came in when his coworker framed the entire interaction as somehow inappropriate.

Now the employee is wondering why he’s being blamed for just doing his job.

Keep reading for the full story.

AITA for doing my job?

I (M29) was on duty watching over this area with a younger coworker (F18) when a mother and a toddler came in, I assume to buy snacks.

Anyway, I quickly notice the child is barefoot, and the mother has his shoes in one of her hands behind him.

The mother appears to have other things on her mind.

She doesn’t say anything to the child or look like she’s trying to correct this, she’s just letting him saunter around barefoot in a public place where food is served in front of all our other customers.

He finally decides he needs to step in, and by his account, he was pretty polite about it.

So I approach the mother and ask her if she’d be able to get his shoes back on, please.

I wasn’t being rude or demanding, but I can’t let the kid run barefoot. He’d be putting the customers off their food, but more importantly he could get hurt if, god forbid, there’s something sharp on the floor.

Of course, the mother couldn’t be corrected.

At this point the woman snaps back at me, “Can’t you see I’m trying?” And then proceeds to actually try and get the shoes on her kid, unlike before.

Fair enough, problem solved, or so I thought.

Then his coworker gets involved — and promptly scolds him for intervening.

My coworker then comes over and asks me what that was all about.

So I explain what happened (not really phased about it, that’s retail life after all), but she looks at me and says, “That was rude of you. You don’t know her circumstances.”

He isn’t so sure he’s on board with this assessment.

I mean, yeah, fair enough, maybe she was the carer for a special needs kid or something, but that doesn’t give her free reign to let those under her care do whatever they want.

Surely a part of my job is to keep the shop clean and safe for everybody, no?

So, AITA for doing my job?

Being good at your job sometimes means doing the hard thing, not the easy thing.

What did Reddit have to say?

This parent would never let their child do something like this.

It’s pretty unreasonable to expect this employee to learn every single guest’s entire life story before approaching them.

It also benefits the mother to not have her child get seriously injured.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a helicopter inspector who grounds a flight after the pilot is rude to him.

His job is to keep guests safe, not to counsel them over their “circumstances.”

A barefoot toddler in a food service area isn’t a personal choice to respect, it’s a basic safety hazard.

Sharp objects, spills, and general foot traffic included. Those are all huge risks.

It’s true that he didn’t know the mother’s full circumstances, but should he really have to?

He was there to do a job, nothing more, nothing less.