She Was Too Busy Actually Doing Her Job To Track A Customer’s Elderly Father, And The Customer Was Furious She Didn’t Notice Where He Wandered
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When you have kids, you get used to keeping an eye on them at all times. Because you well know that if you don’t, in the blink of an eye they might have disappeared in the supermarket. And while they’re usually easily found in the toy aisle, every parent is familiar with that rush of panic and sheer terror when you realise your kid is gone – and the pure relief when you find them an minute later. Is that relief enough to persuade you to buy the toy that they’re gleefully clutching? Well, that entirely depends on the parent.
But when your kids are grown and independent, you forget what it’s like to have to have eyes on them when you’re out of the house (and most of the time when you’re in the house too). You can just get on with your own life and pay attention to what you’re doing – the item you’re looking for in the grocery store, for example – and that’s a pretty nice way to live. Then it comes crashing back down to earth when you have an elderly parent with a proclivity for wandering off, and you find yourself back in that place all over again.
That’s not something that the woman in this story has experienced herself yet. But she was witness to that happening in the boutique where she worked – and the whole situation left her quite confused.
Read on to find out why.
No Ma’am, it isn’t my job to watch your family
I work at a fantastic little boutique. There are like five workers in total and I love styling clothes, so I’m happy.
Today my boss, also the owner, came in to reorganize some more of the store before she went home.
During this reorganization a few groups of customers come in, alright fine, my boss drops what she’s doing and takes care of them.
I continue organizing things by size and style in the front of the store.
But then a weird customer situation came up.
A grown woman came in with her elderly parents.
She and her mother were checking out our jackets for a bit and asks me if I work there. I reply, “yes! Anything I can help you with?”
She then says “Did you see if my father walked into the back of the store?”
I then gave her a look saying “I have no idea”, not in a rude way but in a way that I was clearly preoccupied with my task at hand, I wasn’t even facing in the direction of the back of the store.
And she could not believe the woman’s reaction.
She then says “Oh was it not your turn to?” as if insinuating I wasn’t doing my job by watching where all of the customers were at all times.
My face was all like ??????
Ma’am, I wasn’t aware that my job description involved babysitting your elderly father.
Yikes. This feels kind of like a misunderstanding.
But if the elderly father is prone to wandering off, the family with him really should be keeping an eye on him.
It’s certainly not the shop worker’s job.
Let’s see what folks on Reddit made of this.
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This person was confused by the whole situation.
But others thought it might have been a reference lost on the worker.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman who finds herself in a tough spot when a coworker reports her for the “policy violation” of having her personal water bottle at the register.
Meanwhile, this Redditor thought this was actually quite a common scenario.
Whether or not the woman was implying that the worker should have been alert to what all the customers were doing around her doesn’t change the fact that watching all the random folk who come into the boutique really isn’t this woman’s job. It’s clear that she’s far more interested in actually styling and helping customers with their wardrobe than tracking down random elderly relatives, and that’s absolutely right. Sure it’s nice to help, but not if customers are rude to you – and the implied expectation could certainly be perceived as rude.
Wherever the elderly father wandered off to, let’s hope that they were quickly reunited and he hadn’t got too far. Because that’s quite a stressful situation, so you can perhaps cut the woman a little slack if she did come off as a little rude, because realising that her elderly father has disappeared while out shopping probably was quite a shock. But still, not this worker’s problem (though it would be nice to help).
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