Idiotic Parenting

I see a lot stupid things when I work the Box Office. They range from the senior moments that we all get to the just plain dumb-founding. During the opening day of Sex & The City, for example, I had to explain to little old ladies who were using Fandango for the first time how it worked and why I needed their credit card to call their ticket purchase. I've also had to deal with normally competent people wondering why ticket prices changed on them when there is a sign right there in front of their faces explaining it for them.

But today, something happened in Box Office that never happened to me before. I had to get up and leave my position for 15 minutes because of our guests' behavior. It wasn't the fact that some treat me like I'm their Cabana Boy freshly imported from some third-world country. It was the fact that there was wave after wave of parents who clearly don't know how to act in front of their kids in public.

The bulk of this group consisted of parents growing more and more impatient with me. With every question I am required to ask by management, with every person that was in front of them in line, they wanted faster service. "Give me the ticket. Just give me the ticket." was something I heard over and over from them. And what made this worse was not only their childish tone they took with me, but the fact they did this in front of their kids. Kids who were clearly observing and learning from their parent's action while appearing to behave like good boys and girls.

Normally, I wouldn't have anything against this and would move on, but this happened in rapid succession. It was literally one family after another at my window that did this. I thought, how could this get any worse?

Apparently, much like in the movies, it can get worse. Not too long after the first wave of the Gimme parents I had a woman come up to my window who spanked her daughter in order to get her to move out of the way. Her daughter was just walking up to the window like every kid before her has done, but for some reason, this mother felt the need to spank her in order to reinforce that she was not the one ordering the tickets. Now, when this situation happens, more parents just talk over the head of their child and let them look into the window. Not was the case with this woman.

The straw that broke this camel's back? Oh, you'll want to sit down for this and make sure you have finished drinking your cup of tea before you start the next paragraph.

The parent that made me say to myself "That's it! I need to leave now!" was a father who kicked his son in order to move him out of the way of another patron making his way to my co-worker's window. You read that right; he kicked his own son. Even the mother said in shock, "Don't kick him!" The father didn't even flinch and continued to angrily order his tickets.

I had to get out of that situation. If I stayed, I would have said something I knew I was going to regret to the next family that did something like that. Probably even deny their tickets in simply because they were acting more childish than their kids, which would have gotten me fired on the spot.

Personally, I don't care how good a parent you think you are. You are in public with your kids. They are learning from you and your actions even if you don't know it. There is no excuse for that kind of behavior from the parents, even if the kids no more than an hour ago were screaming like banshees the phrase "Kung Fu Panda! Kung Fu Panda!! I wanna see Kung Fun Panda!" to the point where you gave in to them. And as a parent, if you did that, then you are only confirming one thing for me. The only reason the squeaky wheel gets the oil is so that the owner of the wagon doesn't have to listen to it anymore.