Safeway guard fired after nabbing 4-year-old who ate from opened box of dried fruit in Wash

[Are_grits_groceries]

EVERETT, Wash. — A grocery store security guard was fired after he told the father of a 4-year-old girl that she would face criminal charges for eating from a dried fruit package, a TV station reported.

The child’s mother, Alissa Jones, said the father wasn’t looking when the girl grabbed the package, ate a few pieces of fruit then returned it to a shelf at a Safeway store in Everett, Wash.

Safeway previously faced widespread criticism when a Honolulu couple were arrested over stolen sandwiches and had their 2-year-old daughter taken from them briefly by state officials.

In Washington, the guard took the 4-year-old and her dad to a room and said the girl would face charges and be banned from the chain, Jones said, adding the guard had the girl sign a paper acknowledging she wasn’t allowed to enter any Safeway stores.

The company said it was “appalled” by the guard’s actions and dismissed him. Store officials have apologized to the girl’s parents, Safeway spokesperson Cherie Myers said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/safeway-guard-fired-after-nabbing-4-year-old-who-ate-from-opened-box-of-dried-fruit-in-wash/2011/11/24/gIQAznvXsN_story.html

Who are these people they are hiring?
Moran!
Oh! And that paper will hold up in a court of law. She scribbled.

[coyote]

1. Has everyone lost their common sense?

I swear this a result of our "zero tolerance" society. It's totally fucked up.

[GoCubsGo]

10. Not everyone, but an awful lot of them.

I don't think it's all related to "zero tolerance", either. The damn "zero tolerance" laws are just a symptom. I think it's more that people are no longer taught to think critically. Or, they're just too damn lazy to do so.

[Kurmudgeon]

2. I'm sure the guard will find other work as a pepper spray dispenser.

[Selatius]

3. What crossed the line was making the 4 year-old sign a legally binding document. That's horrible.

It didn't help that the father and the child were placed in an interrogation room either. Forcing a child to sign such a document is ridiculous. It wouldn't hold up in any court, and the guard was going after the wrong person. The parents automatically assume responsibility for any theft or damage to goods being sold on account of their children. The child should have been totally left out of the whole situation.

[TorchTheWitch]

4. the fact that they were dragged into an interrogation room crossed the line

The kid is FOUR YEARS OLD. Young children don't know any better, and if the father was unaware then it was crossing the line to interrogate them at all. All that needed to be done was to inform the father of what the child had done and if the store believed it was necessary to make the father purchase the item that the child opened and ate from though I would think most stores would just excuse it and take the loss for customer relations. That's how my grocery handles such things.

A couple of years ago I was at the grocery store I normally frequent when unknown to a busily shopping mother one of her little kids was gleefully poking a finger into meat packages in order to break the cellophane. A store employee noticed and informed the mother who was very embarrassed and horrified at what her kid had done, but the store did not make her purchase the ruined meat packages and just accepted the loss (which was considerably more of a financial loss than the one product the kid in the OP's story produced). All they did was very politely ask the woman to please keep a closer eye on what her children were up to in the grocery store. That's it. Except that the store manager also kindly guided the mother and her child to a restroom so the child's hands could be washed as poking her fingers into cellophane packages of raw meat is unsanitary. I got to hear the whole interesting story as I had been bored to tears waiting in line at the courtesy counter when this interesting interruption of my boredom occurred. I was actually almost disappointed when it became my turn at the counter and I almost missed how the intrigue was fully resolved (I should probably admit that I'm ashamed by this except I'm not :evilgrin:).

[tblue37]

7. Four year-olds who have been taught how to behave know better than to do

something like that.

Yes, the security guard handled it badly and deserved to be fired, but the father and the kid are also at fault.

Four-year-olds are smarter and more capable than most people realize, and they certainly can learn not to do such things.

I raised 36 kids over 18 years, and none of my kids would have behaved like that in a store. Besides, even if they had been inclined to do so, I would have seen immediately and prevented them--because when I had kids in a store, I accepted the responsibility for keeping an eye on them.

Have you never stood in a checkout line and watched some kid grab candy from the shelves near the cash register, slobber on the package, and then put it back on the shelf? Do you really think it's okay that the parent doesn't keep an eye on his/her kid and prevent the kid from doing that?

I see it often, and it infuriates me, because it is just lazy parenting.

[GoCubsGo]

11. Yep.

They are the same ones who think it's "cute" when their kid lets out one ear-piercing shriek after another. Or, they let them cry and scream at the top of their lungs, instead of taking them outside the store. I can see that sort of behavior out of a toddler, but a 4-year-old should know better. It's possible that the guard just saw this sort of thing one time too many and snapped. I agree that he handled the situation poorly, but I can definitely see where he was coming from.

[Historic NY]

5. A cop wanna be gone wild.........he got the crayon signed confession...

4yr olds culpable mental state.....hungry.

[tblue37]

6. On the other hand, I am often shocked and repulsed while watching

children take things fron shelves, slobber all over them, then return them to the shelves, while their oblivious parents fail to keep even the most minimal control over their behavior in a public place.

The father should have been monitoring his kid's behavior, and she, at age four, should have long since learned not to do things like that.

I did home daycare for 18 years, and I often would have 6 or more kids with me while grocery shopping, since I had no car and had to buy food pretty much every day.

NONE of the kids with me ever caused problems in the store, NONE ever took anything from the shelves without my permission, and certainly NONE ever slobbered all over something and then left it for some unwary customer to pick up and buy.

I don't think there is any excuse for a parent with only ONE child, and one as old as 4, especially, to not be aware of what his kid is doing and to fail to prevent such behavior--both by monitoring her behavior in the store and by teaching her proper behavior in the first place.

[CBHagman]

9. At a RiteAid once...

...I saw this woman at the checkout counter who, when the cashier politely asked to scan the packet of candy the woman's child was already devouring, nastily refused the request. I forget how the cashier resolved the situation, but it was definitely a case of the customer adding insult to injury. I have no patience at all with people who treat merchandise as their own personal property (You see that a lot in bookstores where people ransack the magazine section -- not shopping, just treating the place as a public library with newer periodicals, which they proceed to ruin).

There has to be a happy medium between letting customers lay waste to a place and turning into a retail Nazi. Obviously the case above is an example of the latter, but for every one extreme example that grabs a headline there are thousands of retail employees dealing with everyday shoplifting, etc.

[Douglas Carpenter]

8. there seems to be a real outbreak of child-crime these days

Just in the past 24 hours on this forum I have read about ... a four-year-old stealing fruit - a six-year-old committing a sexual assault (that's what the D.A. called playing doctor) and a twelve-year-old sexual predator (accused of kissing a classmate on the playground). Clearly its time to crack down on this pedo-delinquency -- I say bring back the workhouses and the gallows. Or perhaps if these little scofflaws had jobs as janitors cleaning the schools they wouldn't have time to terrorize the country with their crime wave.