I would have asked the woman ... WTF did you do about the situation? Then immediately told her GTF out of my face.
I suspect I qualify as uncaring!
So....was I being over cautious or uncaring?.....
- Thread starter psuro
- Start date
I would have asked the woman ... WTF did you do about the situation? Then immediately told her GTF out of my face.
I suspect I qualify as uncaring!
I agree with the strategy of notifying the store manager about the behaviors of these monsters. The intervening Karen had no business yanking your chain and should have kept you out of it! Those kids could have proved dangerous to unsuspecting shoppers and possibly injured someone at risk! The risk management folks at the store would nominate you for shopper of the year!!!
just to explore all possibilities here...Maybe the lady you encountered was the MOTHER of the kids 
As a man of color, you'd be tased first, and possibly shot if the officer had their taser and gun on the wrong hip. You did the right thing. This is exactly like Muslim rules forbidding any male to be alone with a woman other than his wife. No male can ever be alone with a child not their own (especially a girl) under any circumstances. None. No exceptions. No good can come out of it, and very probably bad stuff will be put on you, especially if you piss off the parents. You dodged a big one today. Congrats
Don’t intervene with someone else’s kids and punch the ATM lady in the throat. I apoligize for using the term lady here. One who was assigned female at birth.
All good stuff. Almost everyone who posts here is male, and I expected the responses I got.
I am having dinner tonight with some female friends and colleagues and I am going to pose the question the exact same way and see what their response is.
Curious if any of them recommend punching the lady in the throat as @thewholebit did.
I am having dinner tonight with some female friends and colleagues and I am going to pose the question the exact same way and see what their response is.
Curious if any of them recommend punching the lady in the throat as @thewholebit did.
If they do, you may have found the next Mrs. thewholebit.All good stuff. Almost everyone who posts here is male, and I expected the responses I got.
I am having dinner tonight with some female friends and colleagues and I am going to pose the question the exact same way and see what their response is.
Curious if any of them recommend punching the lady in the throat as @thewholebit did.
All good stuff. Almost everyone who posts here is male, and I expected the responses I got.
I am having dinner tonight with some female friends and colleagues and I am going to pose the question the exact same way and see what their response is.
Curious if any of them recommend punching the lady in the throat as @thewholebit did.
i would be surprised if any women thought differently. maybe women over the age of about 55-60 that are of grandparents type age where they can get away with going over and trying to smooth over the situation. but i doubt any parent age women under 50 are going to intervene either as they know the consequences. Maybe the most you would get from a women is going up and asking the kids where their parents are in the store and if they are lost.
Probably was the mother of the kids and she was pissed that they weren't kidnapped.
What a weird f'n reaction for a stranger to have to someone that acted in the same manner as you. As a woman she would have been given way more leeway if she approached those kids.
No way I would have got involved. I might have slammed a locker to distract them.
What a weird f'n reaction for a stranger to have to someone that acted in the same manner as you. As a woman she would have been given way more leeway if she approached those kids.
No way I would have got involved. I might have slammed a locker to distract them.
Was it your place to intervene, no. Was your rationale overly cautious? That's too generous a way to put it. It was patently unreasonable. And this is coming from someone who has worked in child welfare issues for many years. So I'm very aware of the need to take precautions to avoid unwarranted accusations.
Evidently that’s why everyone on the thread is calling her “a lady”? Sometimes I think that finding a lady these days is finding the Jewel of the Nile 😟
Your response shows a complete lack of awareness, which may be a too generous way to put it.
I’m confused by this response. What is your suggested response by ro, who has presumably not worked in child welfare for many years?
Had a driving job that took me 'out there '. One night came across wrecked car in ditch, a man and his boy. When I say out there , sheriffs were 2 hours away . Was working for the government then. Took this guy and his kid home at about 1:30 am jeapordizing my job. Carried his drunk unwilling ass off the ground into the truck. He fell down a dozen times and was belligerent. Poor kid was super nice and curious as we road home. Got dad out of truck, drug his belligerent ass up the hill again to his house, kid found the hide a key, got him inside and he said he was going to get his gun and shoot me........
I ran down that driveway as fast as I could. Big long one wide open too. Getting near my truck I hear a moan ......................................Thank You !
Never know what your experience would bring. It's really not your business and the gal guilted you. If you saw something you needed to act on it seems by your OP sensitivity you would have acted.
I ran down that driveway as fast as I could. Big long one wide open too. Getting near my truck I hear a moan ......................................Thank You !
Never know what your experience would bring. It's really not your business and the gal guilted you. If you saw something you needed to act on it seems by your OP sensitivity you would have acted.
So, just to follow up....had dinner with colleagues and friends yesterday (all female).
I posed the scenario pretty much word for word what I presented here....they all agreed I did the correct thing (frankly I was a little surprised by that). None of the women have kids (all career women). None suggested I throat punch the lady like @thewholebit suggested, so he will not be able to find his next wife.
Good convo.
So you took a drunk driver away from an accident scene? I’m not sure that was the right move.
I still have no idea what 'the right move' would have been . Per my post .......Sheriff 2hours away. It's very late on a summer night , dirt road in one of the hottest areas in the lower 48: my instincts were to protect the kid number one and nothing else. It's the solution I came up with . Sheriff was notified as I also called Child protective services the next morning. I don't think you understand the remote nature of the scene. Sometimes it's hard to know what the right thing is to do. As per the OP . I feel fine with my decision.
Late to the party, but I agree with everyone here. Never interject with kids. I think if the 8 year old were beating her defenseless brother with a baseball bat and someone was in danger, you have to take the bat away. But not in the scenario you posted.
And I guarantee that woman has an ax to grind with ALL men, not just you. Don't take it personally.
And I guarantee that woman has an ax to grind with ALL men, not just you. Don't take it personally.
WTF is wrong with people. Absent you witnessing actual abuse or harm to a child, you should absolutely not interject. The only scenario where someone would've had a right to say something to you would have been if you DID step in to say something to the kids.
My suggested response is conditional because the fact pattern he laid out was vague. Assuming as seems to suggest that the kid was being teased, even to an excessive degree, that's not real abuse & there was no cause for him to get involved. And that should have been his response to the lady who later confronted him.
But for to say that he's not getting involved b/c I could be falsely accused is unreasonably paranoid based on the facts he laid out.
I would agree with that. I just didn’t get where you were going with. Not getting involved because it’s not your kids and it’s just teasing would be the proper reason to not get involved.
Well, you don't seem like you are very aware. Apparently, you like to jump to conclusions pretty quickly without knowing about the psuro's background or other pertinent details that weren't included in the original post. Hopefully you didn't hurt your back getting on your high horse to talk down to the rest of us.
I'm not sure what people expected you to do. How about a third option of "WTF was I supposed to do?"
I don't know that I would have done anything either. Although, the woman that approached you, did you ask her what she did to help the girl?
I don't know that I would have done anything either. Although, the woman that approached you, did you ask her what she did to help the girl?
Ro's post was vague. That was on him, & to a point BWI. You can only include so many details. And yeah, I was probably too pissy in my response.
But the bottom line -- he said he didn't get involved b/c he didn't want to be falsely accused. But the scenario he described was not one where that was a reasonable concern, & I very well know about such scenarios from 25 years of prof experience.
And that's unfortunate because - tho intervention was not warranted in the scenario he described - in other scenarios where there genuine harm is occurring, people far too often disengage out of misplaced fear.
Maybe you don't give a shit about that & don't give a shit about your fellow man. I don't know you enough to draw a conclusion, and I really don't care either way. But I can reasonably surmise enough that 'ro is not that cold-blooded based on his history here. So imo he made a mistake, & I think he'd want to know that.
In the 50 Cent song 'Many Men' he said "pull out! pull out!" - solid advice in a very abundant number of circumstances.
When I was a kid, my brother and I were allowed to peruse the toy section at our local department stores by ourselves as long as we stayed together. In reality, my parents were never more than a few feet away (maybe at the end of the aisle) but it just felt like we were granted ultimate freedom. It’s a different world today - if you’re not an arm’s length from your child at all times, the authorities may get involved. That said, it sounds like these children should have been reprimanded BY THEIR PARENTS and not by a complete stranger.
I thought this matter was done, but I see these posts pop up, so I will respond.
If I saw a child get physically abused, I would step in. Since this was a grocery store, if some cans fell on a kid's head, I would have helped immediately.
But that is not what happened. The facts presented in my original post are the pertinent facts relative to the issue at hand. And I stand by my statement - I don't want to put myself in a position where I have to defend myself against some perception by others. It's a no win situation.
Hey 'Ro,
Had a relatively similar situation a few years ago. My wife and I were in the grocery store and I happened to notice a special needs girl (about 12) wandering around looking lost. Similar to you, my first thought was I can't approach her. We were in the checkout line, so I did have my wife hold our place and I went to customer service and just let them know, but no way, no how was I going up and engaging her. Even there with my wife, no good coming of that.
That was a good way to handle it. But, she was alone. These kids were together and clearly in the middle of a sibling squabble.
The flip side is - if you had held the place in line, and your wife went to the girl to help....she would have nothing to worry about.
We discussed that and even she didn't feel comfortable going up to her. Downside of the Twitter age, seems everyone expects the worse out of people. But in the end, you should feel no guilt, if there was a store employee in the aisle, I'd have pointed it out, but I'm also not hunting someone down, since by the time you find them and they find the kids, the parents are likely back and have shut it down.
I can tell you with absolute certainty that you did the right thing. My parents were business owners of a food establishment for 25 years. I noticed the natural progression of what you can and cannot do in addressing a situation similar to yours. Some of the individuals criticizing you don’t understand the potential ramifications of getting involved. In 1972 a woman and four kids came into our business for lunch. The kids were unruly, teasing one another and disrespectful to their mom. One thing led to another and a glass ashtray fell off the table and broke. My grandmother got up grabbed the kid by the arm spun him around and throttled him twice across the butt, and I mean hard. There was utter silence from that moment until they left, problem solved. Today she would have been arrested for simple assault.
Last edited:
