First day of remote school went okay. My kid’s teacher seems to have a good sense of the middle ground of “school time means no playing with the dog” and “you are literal children so of course this isn’t a board meeting”.
My internal autumn switch went off so I’m making lots of things with pumpkin and sweet potato and the like. Next week will also be at proper fall temperature and I’m so ready.
Things are better for me after the sudden dismissal from my job. My former job decided not to fight my unemployment claim (so nice of them, wasn’t it ) and we went through our finances and unemployment was going to be enough for me still pay on my part of the bills. So yay! I decided to go back to school starting in the Spring, and I also got a part time job which I haven’t started yet. It’s seasonal part time 12-20 hours, so that should help out. I know it will affect the unemployment, but it might lead to regular part time after the season, so I figured it was worth it.
About a week ago I had another encounter with the ‘biters’, small kids trained by their parents to bite people so that the parents can claim compensation when you try to get the little accident off of your person.
The little taint stain tried three times before I decided I’d had enough and mule-kicked him into a stand of Ooshie toys, which collapsed onto of him.
Didn’t think much of it, apologised to the manager and was told to not come back for a week in case the guardians were staking the place out
Got a text later on that day from the manager of this screaming woman being told she’d have to pay for all the damaged Ooshies the kid had ‘knocked down’, and if she wouldn’t pay, she’d be barred from the shopping centre.
Fast forwards to today, I’m back at the store, checked in at the front counter if I was allowed to still shop here and get told yes, on one condition.
I aim for something expensive again if somebody’s crotch-weasel decides to start biting, since the parents lawyered up, demanded the footage and then went reeeeeeally quiet when, from the back of me, there’s footage of me shaking off this kid twice before mule kicking him seven feet backwards into the stand.
Now, funny thing, because biters became such a hazard, not just to others, but to themselves due to the high risk of STD transference, there’s a precedent that if it can be proven that the child had attempted to assault someone multiple times, the guardians can be technically charged with the lowest category of assault, which is automatically dismissed but still remains on their permanent record, and child protection steps in to investigate.
So not only did their own lawyer tell them to shut up and get down, but they’ve had to fork out for nearly a hundred Ooshies to boot.
Karma is a cruel mistress, but sometimes she gives you the win.
What the hell is wrong with people.
I genuinely feel bad for the kids who are being raised and manipulated by scumbag parents.
Frankly, as a parent, that’s child abuse and they shouldn’t have custody of their kids. And yes, it’s also a massive danger to others.
I should not be surprised at this point, but I am genuinely amazed with what crazy and bad schemes people come up with on a regular basis.
People who view their children more as lottery tickets than anything reminiscent of an actual human being.
10/10
What in the sam hill? I’ve never even heard of “biters” outside of a walking dead episode, but apparently it’s a recurring issue? As a parent I have a hard time even wrapping my head around how someone could use their child like that.
Ughh… the saddest part is that working in a grocery store, we encounter that here, too. Sometimes the parents let the kids run around to the other side of the registers, you know, during a pandemic. I had one kid constantly try to bite me, and I said “Ma’am, your son is attempting to bite me, and I am not allowed to touch him, can you please reel him in?” in a clearly not amused tone since she had been ignoring it.
She told me he’s harmless and to just keep scanning her items. So I stopped scanning her items. She asked me why I stopped. “Because, ma’am, when my hands are low enough to reach for the conveyer belt, your son is attempting to grab my arm and gnaw on it, and I have the right to refuse service in lieu of giving him the parenting you should be.”
She and I had the most intense staring contest for about a minute straight, and she walked over, grabbed her kid, and walked out of the store without buying her groceries in complete silence.
Got a call from my manager later on, thankfully the nice one who knows better and not the guy who will bend over backwards to kiss any customer’s patoot. She tells me laughing that I refused her service because her son was being ‘a little bit excitable’ and complaining how we were marginalizing her as the parent of a special needs child.
Now, here’s the thing; I was a special needs kid when I was a kid too. I still didn’t get away with that stuff. My parents, for all the bad they did, at least were able to be sensible about my behavior in public and didn’t mistreat the employees for my own behavior as a rotten 5-6 year old.
So yeah, biters are a legit thing. Not sure if this lady was just a negligent parent or one who was legitimately training her kid to do the lawsuit bait, but I am not going to suffer someone’s child biting me and them doing absolutely nothing.
This was months ago but I don’t think I’ll forget that for as long as I live.
fall makes Sint happy
It is absolutely true that some special needs kids are prone to biting but A) that’s a behavior you work to eliminate and B) there’s no reason to be a public health hazard. I’m sure you’ve had kids who were really bouncy or quirky or sensitive to certain sounds – the difference in context is obvious.
This part ESPECIALLY, cuz it’s a freaking pandemic!
Real talk, I’ve been sinking a lot of time into WoW because my PTSD loves isolation and Azeroth is my happy place. So, I’ve been working on BFA stuff, guild recruiting and just meandering around the world. I’m trying not to fully lose myself in the game (again) because I dont want to isolate from the people who do actually care about me which is why I’ve taken up hobbies with each of them. I make a podcast with one and build Gundams with another and all of us play Magic on Sundays.
I’m not dealing. I thought i finally had friends only to get stabbed in the back and gkcked without even a talk before the day it happened. Now this character is as good as dead to me because I can’t show my face on the server anymore. I boosted this toon and everything for this guild because I thought I belonged. I haven’t belonged anywhere in 7 years.
I’m sorry that happened to you. Losing people you thought you could trust sucks really, really badly. I know that all too well.
I’m an autistic semi verbal player. I had just gotten to the point where I could voice chat with them too. Yeah, I have RL issues. Nobody told me they were uncomfortable until right before the officers kicked me. But other people were venting RL stuff so I thought it was ok. Apparently not.
WTF! Okay…that’s jacked up. People need to be a little more understanding of things like that. I am so sorry you had to deal with that bull.
Edit: Oh my gods…I cant type. sigh
Right and it was something absolutely fixable if they’d actually communicated that need with me.
It’s that simple. One of my…now ex-family members dates a guy with Aspergers and I learned very quickly that I just had to be more…what’s the word? To the point with him. It’s not hard.
Family doesn’t take the pandemic as seriously as they should; they’re heavily conservative, so you can imagine where it comes from. We (“we”) had a birthday party here in my house for my grandmother with like 15 people over and now she’s super sick. If she gets me sick too, I probably won’t live through it because I am incredibly vulnerable.
When she first mentioned having people over I reminded her that there was a pandemic still happening and she said, “you have to live some time!” and boy howdy it’s gonna be a cruel joke if her “living” ends up killing me. Just couldn’t skip one birthday party, I guess.
edit: now she’s in the emergency room