OK I freely admit it’s a silly thing, but I have a pet peeve about parents who let their kids run rampant in a store.  Whether it be running up and down aisles (and risking a collision with a display or perhaps an elderly customer), picking up toys to play with and sitting on the floor (blocking an aisle) , or the one that really gets me, bouncing and throwing balls in the store.   Needless to say I’ve seen my fair share of balls that were thrown and hit displays (resulting in a mess I had to clean up) or in some cases hit customers and I really am not sure when it became “Okay” to grab a ball off a display and start throwing it around inside a store.   I know my mom would have slapped my hand made me put it back immediately.   A lot of stores still have signs that say “If you break it, you’ve bought it” so I wonder how the parents would feel if their kid chucked a ball and knocked over a display of champagne and wiped out 10-20 bottles or so.

So yesterday when we again got in some playballs I decided to post this sign.   I of course took it down immediately after taking the photo, since of course SOMEONE would have found it offensive, but I just always wanted to do this:

Yesterday I also watched as a teenage girl picked up a cat scratching post( in a fairly large box) to ask her mom if they could buy it and when the mom said no, instead of walking 10 feet to put it back where she found it, she plopped it on top of a rack of potato chips.  Since I was right there I seized the moment and grabbed it and said “Oh, I’ll put this back for you!” and she muttered “Oops! I’m sorry” but the mom didn’t say a thing.

So please parents, control your rowdy kids.  Obviously you don’t care how their room looks at home, but unless you’re planning on cleaning up after them, please teach them to put things back where they found them and teach them to respect other people’s property.    That is all.