People Watching Episode 1: Unsuccessful Mother

I should have titled this post ‘Bad Mother’ but I felt ‘Unsuccessful’ was the better word choice. 

I have a feeling that once we hit the year 2000 it became completely unacceptable to smack a child upside the head in public for being a piece of shit. I remember going to the grocery store as a wee one and I would always hear kids screaming. I’m not sure why they were screaming, I just assumed it was one of the common sounds of the grocery store. One day, I decided to let out a scream as well (for no apparent reason) and my dad smacked me upside the head like a good father should. The pain paired with everyone laughing at me was a good enough reason to never scream in the grocery store (Or any other other store for that matter) ever again.

Fast forward to yesterday. My co-worker and I were brooding about how some moron set of parents allowed their child to violate a 165$ dollar wheel of some fancy brie cheese. (They picked it off the shelf and stomped on it. What kind of 3 year old still thinks this is appropriate behavior? One raised by dirty old passive hippies, that’s who.) 

While he was trying to salvage what had not been ruined, we heard a roar from the bowels of hell. Another three year old came screaming into the door. We thought the mom would be close behind, but no, she was playing the ‘if I ignore my child’s bad behaviors, they will stop.’ game. Well, she ignored him for a good 10 minutes, and his blood curdling red-in-the-face screaming continued. By the time she had reached checkout, the child was ripping things off the shelves, kicking other customers and ramming carts into people and shelves alike. Once they had left the store (and of course the mother refused to take any responsibility, or make her child take any responsibility for that matter…) our manager rushed to the security camera room to see if the mother would do anything about it out of the eyes of the judgmental natural foods shoppers in the parking lot. Apparently, she gave her child a fucking cookie.

WHAT. THE. FUCK. LADY. 

Do you know what kind of person your son will grow up to be if you reward that kind of shit with fucking cookies? The kind of person who you probably bitch about on a daily basis to your passive aggressive husband! But of course, the double edged sword to this matter was that if this woman decided to appropriately smack her child upside the head and explain to him why he was getting his ass beat (Or at least leave his stupid ass in her hot Subaru with the windows cracked) Some stuffy activist would have called the police on her and she would been arrested for ‘child abuse’.

There used a fine line between child abuse and punishing your child. When I was a youngin’, I knew my place. My parents provided for me, and when I stepped out of line, my favorite things would be taken away. If I really stepped out of line and showed disrespect, then my parents would disrespect me upside the head. Now a days, I have teacher friends calling child protective services because their student refused to eat the dinner that was put in front of him and the parents didn’t jump at their beck and call to make macaroni and cheese. “You can’t let your own child go hungry!” wailed my naive teacher friend. Well, if my child is being an ungrateful piece of shit comfort food fiend he totally can.

Juice Cleanse: The Farce and its Victims.

As mentioned, I am a ‘Natural Foods Connoisseur’. My current employment requires this so they have their own certifying program. That means I get to sit through lectures about the odds and ends of homeopathy, poopy soy products, and why it’s always important for a chicken to be happy and cage-free before you slaughter it. (You also shouldn’t put eggs in cages because apparently cage-free eggs are MUCH better for you, me, and our pal earth.)

Phase 1: On the sales floor, it’s my job to educate customers and eventually get them to purchase some unnecessary  wellness product or some overpriced free-range rib eye steaks. Lately, my education efforts have gone towards these rather rotund women on some weird ‘juice’ cleanse where the juice is actually lemon water, honey and cayenne pepper. They usually use the “I’m just doing this to be healthier.” Line, when I think it may just translate to “I am a fat and frequently try fad diets.”

Phase 2: The lemon-honey-cayenne-water will do nothing except MAYBE cleanse a few organs. Otherwise, if you aren’t eating anything with it, you become irritable and unpleasant and no one wants to be your friend. My next step is to convince the customer to buy an actual fresh juice which is made by shoving vegetables through this huge scary loud juicer that is near impossible to clean. (Beats… apples… carrots…lemons… cucumber…etc.)

Phase 3: Although the fresh juiced juice that I made for this poor gullible woman is now packed with 20 times more nutrients than her wannabe-tea concoction, she is still losing out on some valuable calorie burning. She could have just eaten the 2 pounds of produce I put through the juicer and had almost two meals worth. And because they would have been whole vegetables and fruits, her body would have burned more calories eating/digesting them than it just did slurping the 7$ juice down. (If there are red beats in the juice, their poop will be pink.)

Because I do not know the names of the countless women and men who do this everyday (Spend 7$ on a puny cup of juice…) I must hope they stumble upon this post and never fall for the fresh juice farce ever again.