Posted on 06/28/2008 12:50:04 PM PDT by Oyarsa
A reader writes: "Last night we were out with friends and went to the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory at Bella Terra/Huntington Beach. We were eating outside as my 5 year old daughter got an uncontrollable urge to use the bathroom and began crying and screaming 'diarrhea, diarrhea.' I ran into the store with her in my arms, begging to use the bathroom and they refused multiple times."
I explained she had diarrhea and couldn't hold it and told them she was about to go on the floor. They refused again and never offered me any alternatives. I begged them to have a heart and that she was 5 but by that time she had lost it all over herself and me.
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The hell with them. Let the kid go on the floor.
So ridiculous.
I don’t know what’s worse, that they couldn’t let the poor kid go, or that they wouldn’t let her go because they were afraid of liability.
Ok, when is the first joke about this happening at the chocolate factory going to come in?
Consumerist needs daily content - some days they are the champion of the ripoff victim, other days they are a too-large megaphone for the usual me-me-me crowd.
Why is the chocolatier’s responsibility to “offer alternatives?” The mother is an adult and the child has been on this earth for five years - has the mother never experienced a bodily-function emergency before especially during the child’s infancy?
We always stop by a mall or shopping center’s directory to get an idea of where the public restrooms are - common sense, Be Prepared etc.
I get a nagging feeling this mother might be the same whose 5 year old destroys the churchgoing experience by acting up for a full hour each Sunday.
**Legally**, if they didn’t purchase the food from the merchant, the merchant may be able to deny the use of the bathroom., or at least they should.
Free samples?
That’s too bad. I’ve run a few retail stores in my life and the bathroom thing was an issue in a few places:
One store (high society type) was very open with restrooms, they went so far as to allow a male employee to use the women’s bathroom as he was a transgender person.
Another store (high crime) had a policy of no bathroom use whatsoever. One day some employees decided to break that policy and ended up with a man coming out of the bathroom with a ski mask on and a big gun in their faces.
But I’d say this place was wrong for what they did. A child in an emergency at a location that doesn’t have crime issues should be allowed to use the bathroom.
The manager of the Chocolate Factory is Willy Wanker.
“I get a nagging feeling this mother might be the same whose 5 year old destroys the churchgoing experience by acting up for a full hour each Sunday.”
A 5 year old can destroy the church going experience???
Who cares what she does in church at a moment like this. She was a sick child.
Hard to say, some places it is the place where employees keep their purses and you can’t let strangers go in there. My son worked at Target and it had a big public restroom and people were always pooping all over the floor in the bathroom and IN THE DRESSING ROOMS TOO.
She had the Hershey squirts.
Regardless, it sounds as if they did go there to eat from reading the article.
Sorry, I couldn’t care less.
Is this what Free Republic is for?
I do this all the time just to see peoples' reactions.
Zero tolerance is not confined to public schools. I wonder if the employee who invoked it went to a public school.
No way could it be otherwise.
Standing in line, I couldn't help but notice that someone with the same problem had just been there and that no one had noticed - I was the one who had to point it out to the, uh, shift (cough cough) manager.
I don't know if the other 3 or 4 people at the counter left as I did or not because I didn't look back.
Sorry, lady. Take the kid home and clean her up and then feed her a good dinner.
When I was a teenager I worked in a dept store similiar to Target. There are some nasty people out there, thats for sure.
And yet you made the effort to not only click on this thread, but post a reply as well.
Is this what Free Republic is for?
Why don't you tell us? After all, you've been here almost a year now. LOL.
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