I Am Not Responsible For Your Child

I heard an interesting news story today about a local man (by local I mean still within the confines of the same capital city as me) who has been charged for leaving his children unattended in a McDonalds playground while he went off shopping for over an hour. Of course this is an appalling display of parenting, but I felt like calling in and telling them to hang out at the chain of video game stores I work for and they could make a lot of revenue of the number of parents who do the same with us.

When I worked in the Carindale branch I swear we had one kid who must have had parents who worked in the centre, because every single day after school he would be at our store from 3:30 to close, for months, just playing on the demo consoles and walking around. I don’t think I saw his parents even once, and he NEVER bought anything. That’s only one of the more extreme examples, there are plenty more.

Considering the number of parents who have to drag their kids out of the store while the child kicks and screams demanding they want *insert whatever games is awesome right now here*, how are we to know when that stranger drags a kid out of the store that that person is not the childs parent or legal guardian? Every day I wait for the police to come in and discuss with me the circumstances of a kidnapping, and I just can’t wait for the parents to try and blame me or my staff for not watching their child and I finally get to ask the person why they don’t pay for our babysitting service they use so frequently.

I don’t really want any child to get hurt or taken, but it’s so annoying listening to some mum tell her kids she’ll be back in an hour for them and to just stay in here.

The law states that you are not supposed to leave any child under the age of twelve unattended, but I watch it happen every single day. It makes me determined to be a superior parent when it’s my turn to have a child. I mean, jeeze, I feel bad leaving my sixteen year old nephew at our house alone!

I’m so glad to hear about someone finally getting caught for this, I just hope they can do it some more so people will stop being so irresponsible.

Sorry for the morally outraged outburst, I’m done now. ;p

Credit Card Fraud

I had a rather interesting day. A customer was asking me to let her commit credit card fraud. Yup, you read that right, she wanted me to let her use her husbands card (no husband present) and falsely write his signature. She didn’t even have ID to prove she shared his last name(ie/ prove she was his wife) and she couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t accept that.

She kept showing me her wallet filled only with his cards saying “see it’s my husbands wallet” but all I could see was a mans wallet, no proof she was related in anyway to that man. She just didn’t quite grasp the concept of why I couldn’t let her forge the signature. I’m quite aware she might have been telling the truth, but the risk is just too high, considering she was buy around $300 worth of stuff.

Crazy people.

I’ve been re-reading some of my earlier work on one of my novels (Have I mentioned yet that I’m the kind of person who has way too many ideas and so ends up flitting from story to story like a butterfly) trying to catch up to where I left off last time so I can finish the story. So I’m gonna get back to it now.