Thursday, June 9, 2011

Affluent Customer X

"Boys will be boys...I guess" came to mind while shopping at Whole Foods earlier today. Lets rewind for a minute. While rewinding go ahead and be stereotypical while you're at it. If possible. Whole Foods can be a very expensive store. Most of time while shopping there you run into a few types of customers:

-Affluent customers
-Hipsters
-Hippies
-Healthy/organic families
-Uncategorizables

When my previous thought came to mind, it was the more affluent customer. His precious (bratty) seeds were RUNNING RAMPANT. They looked to be about 6 and 4, both redheads and both boys. Scooping armfuls of boxes off of shelves, threatening to rub solid air freshener all over each other's faces and daring each other to lick the cart. When I first spotted them, I was wandering around Whole Foods aimlessly, as I often do, and happened upon two innocent looking redheaded boys sitting in the cart together, alone. Other than them, the aisle was completely empty. They smiled. I smiled.

"Where are your parents?" I asked. They stared at me blankly for about 5 seconds and then their dad popped up.

"Hi." I said a bit surprised.
"If you wanted these specific items why didn't you just come here yourself?!" he hurried passed me while yelling on his phone.

I turned back around to look at natural toilet cleaners. All of a sudden I heard a loud crash.

"Pick it up!"
"No!" they yelled in unison. They've got this poor man outnumbered, I thought to myself. Never have more kids than adults while grocery shopping, if possible. Unwinnable battle. As they continued to tell their dad, "no!", I thought about my very own son. I wondered if he was behaving or throwing food at daddy, since that's his new favorite thing to do when he disagrees with being told no. They were having dinner from the hot bar while I did the shopping. It makes for much quicker shopping and it's a way to keep him entertained and fed while I get things done. I ventured off to the tables and chairs area to check up on them.

"No! No! No!" I heard from a distance. A child's voice. Oh no, I thought, is he giving daddy trouble? *evil grin* As I approached them closer I realized he was having another power struggle with daddy.

"Don't throw your plate!" my husband said sternly. He took one look at "da-da" and reached for it again. This has become the new thing. Throwing his plate. Even if he's hungry, if he's mad the plate and all of it's content is getting thrown full force, all while saying, "yum! yum! yum!" It's an almost immeadiate reaction. It goes:

1. Anger
2. Little hand meets plate
3. Plate and food meets mommy and the floor.

And it's all happening in about 0-5 seconds. Sometimes, because he's a sweet boy as I've previously stated, he'll help clean up the mess. Other times, when he's being a stubborn boy, he falls out IN the food. Imagine a toddler screaming and kicking in a plate of food that was thrown on the floor. All was fine at Whole Foods though, he didn't throw his plate. Was it daddy's stern voice? Or his sense of being in a public place? Who knows? All I know is this mama was not cleaning up a plate of food off the floor or herself this afternoon. Affluent customer X was doing all the cleaning. And for some reason, I felt a bit of relief in knowing it's not just me.

2 comments:

  1. Ahah! Thank you for articulating this. Chapel Hill and Carrboro are swarming with these types who are so "evolved" in their affluent hippie parenting that they have no idea what to do with their own children. Since you're a mom you probably want to hold yourself back from coming up to them and yelling yourself!

    -Kari

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  2. Oh my goooooodness, you reminded me why I don't mind not working at Food Hole any longer. Augh, some of the customers were just plain awful.

    Still, always a highlight when you and the fam came in!

    -Leslie

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