Incident Report

I had recently sent out a request to friends asking for ideas to write about, since my life seems so utterly boring these days. Someone said to write about my customers. Truthfully, most of my customers who come in the store are great. There are a few wacky people, and who isn’t, and there are some who are horrible people.

So, I take her advice, and will write about a customer I had on Thursday. I might warn you, that this won’t be pretty because I really hope this guy gets the book thrown at him to the highest degree.

A man and wife with their 1 year old child came into the store. There were some bills and paperwork and he told me why he was there. From the get go, I knew what he was telling me was a lie, but I looked at the letter from corporate, the bill and began trying to understand why he was there. While I was looking down at my paperwork, the woman had set the baby on the chair in front of my computer. The man said something to make me look up, and the minute I did, he hauled off and smacked the baby across the face. I mean he slapped him like an adult would smack another adult. I honestly don’t know how I can put how I felt at that moment into words. I gasped extremely loud while my hand involuntarily went to my heart and my eyes were as wide with shock as they possibly could have been. I stared in disbelief for what seemed like a million years. When I looked at the mother and still without being able to speak, she just shyly looked down. I could not speak. I was seeing red. The baby did NOTHING. I mean didn’t even make a sound. WHY? Why did this man do this? I couldn’t ask, I couldn’t speak. When I looked back at this cowardly piece of shit, he continued to talk to me about his problem and why he was there, as if NOTHING had happened. He very obviously didn’t think he did ANYTHING wrong!

I was in shock, and didn’t know what to do. I got him out of the store as quickly as possible. I know what you’re thinking. Why didn’t you say something to him? Why didn’t you tell him to leave? Why didn’t you smack him across the face or kick him in the balls? The fact is, I was on autopilot, and had no idea what I was doing or saying and truth be told; if you told ME this happened, and that you couldn’t say anything, I totally would say "if that were ME, I'd say___ fill in the blank" I would think I would too, but it didn’t happen, I couldn’t function and I had to make him leave the store as fast as possible. I have been struggling with this since. Why didn’t I tell him off? The point is, no one knows what they'd really do in this situation. But I did do something..

When he left, I immediately contacted a manager from another store in my market. My manager had the day off and I needed answers. What is our policy for this? What should I say? What do I have the 'right' to say? He was amazing, and got on this immediately. I spoke with the head of security and loss prevention for our market, and he found the incident on video camera. My co-worker who was working all the way at the other side of the store, and heard the slap down there, got his license plate number. See, we didn’t have HIS name, because he was in the store trying to close out his 'cousins' account. Can I tell you what the baby did to "deserve" this ghastly smack? The Loss Prevention manager while reviewing the tape told me. The baby touched his father’s belt. That’s it. That’s all. The baby cried for a millisecond like he was used to being smacked and if he continued to cry, he would get it again. I am horrified just writing this.

I talked more to the manager assisting me, because I was so upset, distraught, and horrified. He insisted that I did the right thing and that I handled myself appropriately and commendably. As I'm sure you gather the rest of my shift, I was a mess, and couldn’t wait to leave. On my way home MY manager called me. He read the email string that had been going back and forth with the other manager, security, and myself and wanted to make sure I was ok. Thank you for that. He as well, assured me I did everything right.

I can’t even put into words how I feel. You hear about these things, and you see them on TV and in the movies, but it’s so different when you see it in front of your face. I am terrified for this child. I am terrified for this woman. I am grateful for security cameras and that the LP manager was able to transfer the incident on a disk and will be handing this off to the proper authorities.