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.
(Excerpt) Read more at consumerist.com ...
My apologies - I need to correct my assumption the store didn’t have an obligation regarding their facility - but I see the California UPC mandates it.
The mom should file a written complaint.
I will forever be grateful to a few small local businesses that had ‘No Public Restroom’ but graciously allowed me to use their employee facilities when I was 9 months pregnant! I think things like that go a long way towards fostering good relations in the community. Of course, this place in question is a big corporation and doesn’t really care about that kind of thing.
This one probably knows ‘subpoena,’ ‘mental anguish’ and a few other choice words and phrases as well. lol
My call:
The woman was right, the manager is a serious ichbay who needs her face smacked and I hope this company suffers greatly for their lack of basic decency and creulty.
It’s asshats like this manager and the heartless company that gives libs all the fuel they need to legislate every aspects pf our lives.
And that attitude returns you dividends I’ll wager. Good on ya.
Good...the fact that she wants nothing lends her oddles of credibility in my book.
I would want one thing - the manager’s job.
OK. I know everyone hates everything European, but one law that I do like is that, at least in Italy, every business is required to have public bathrooms that they must allow to be used for all public persons whether they buy something or not...ducking for cover. lol.
Not to scare you or anything, but in October, I went to my 20th Class Reunion and at least 10-15 of the kids I knew since I was 6 years old...Good luck with that “I’ll never see them again”. lol.
In most places the number of bathrooms is dictated by the capacity of the building. Inadequate bathrooms is a health hazard and not something to be laughed at.
Any manager who’d rather his people sit around waiting for 15 mins rather than working is pretty darn stupid.
Whatever. With all the liability laws and anti-discrimination laws, I can see how stores would have no-flex policies on this. If this was a reliable way to get into the employee restroom in stores with no public restroom, similar scenes would soon be staged regularly both for the benefit of adults who really could have waited, and for thugs wanting to hold up the place. After all, no way is a little kid going to be sent back in the employee-only area and bathroom without an accompanying adult . . .
I am so tired of people using the “we have a policy” excuse not to do the common-sense, and often, right thing.
I don’t give a sh1t if you have a policy. Make an exception in an emergency. It’s the same zero-tolernace idiocy mindset. It’s the same “rules are rules” barbara streisand.
I had this happen in a Rite Aid that I actually knew all of the employees in the store. My 3 year old needed to pee, I asked them to use the bathroom. they said no and the child could not hold it any longer and urinated all over the basket and items in it.
I left and took my accounts elswhere to a smaller store.
Rite aid bought them out about four years ago. I would give my back teeth for a smaller independent pharmacy to move into the area.
Thank heavens that I changed school districts between elementary and high school. So, unless I attend my 6th grade graduation reunion, luck is with me. Do they even do those?
On the other hand...how many of them would remember what I did. I don’t remember anything particularly embarassing that happened to any other kid in elementary school. which either means I was unobservant at the time, people just don’t remember things like that 20 some odd years later or I was the only one to do something horribly terrible. LOL
On one hand, I feel for the kid. On the other hand, my natural reaction, even if I were kind enough to keep it to myself, on having a 5-year-old getting carried around my store chanting “Diarrhea! Diarrhea!” would probably be the same as the immigrant grocer’s in the David Lee Roth video: “Not in my store you don’t!”.
I fully agree. It seems like a common sense business practice if nothing else. I often stop at some fast food chain to use the restroom when I’m on the highway travelling and often end up buying something before I leave just because I’m there.
I would be proud to be fired for letting a child use the employee bathroom.
This is my local shopping plaza and I will not be using this store again (even though I will be going to the movies there Monday and the best thing in the world to eat in a movie is a dark chocolate covered apple...). I have three kids and no one has EVER refused us when a little one really needed to “go.”
Human kindness is very close to love. Think about any hospitalization you’ve ever had. When you need help, a kind nurse (and not a minimalist one) makes all the difference in the world.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.