Post by leenahyena05 on Jul 14, 2011 11:53:52 GMT -5
Okay, this is a relatively mild instance of bad parenting, but it is something that hurts others and, in general, is a real pain in the neck.
I volunteer at a natural history and science museum. I work the information desk in the front, usually recommending restaurants in the area or telling people how to navigate the local bus system. Most of our volunteers are elderly women, and we usually have a couple of them working at the ticket-checking booth (due to lack of public funding, a few years ago we began to charge museum admission) to make sure people have valid tickets, but also to scan membership cards and enter how many people in the party are visiting. Occasionally, the ticket-checkers will want to take breaks, so someone from the information desk will cover for them, thus, I end up spending time ticket-checking as well.
There is a trend I have noticed among parents who bring in their infants and toddlers. They always, always, always think that it's cute to give the tickets/membership cards to the fruit of their loins to hand to the ticket takers.
It usually goes like this: A couple walks in, each with a baby in his/her arms, and when they approach the ticket-checking booth they shove the ticket or card into the baby's hand (I almost feel as though they do this because they see that I'm female and think I will appreciate it). They subsequently come up to the booth and try to make the infant hand me the card. The infant doesn't understand a word of what the parent is saying, as it is an infant and therefore cannot talk (from the Latin infantus: not speaking), so the infant resorts to putting the ticket/card in its mouth before the parent grabs the infant's arm and puppeteers the infant to give me the ticket or card. I then have to touch said entry authorizing object, check the date on the ticket or scan the card, and give the object, dripping with slobber, back so the family can go through.
As a result, ticket-checkers get sick more than any other volunteer in the museum. I recently got over a very severe throat infection (I am not in school right now, so the only contact I had had with large groups of strangers I had had was the museum) that put me "out of commission" for almost two weeks.
This is coming from someone who has a good deal of contact with postmortem remains (I do the occasional taxidermy) of animals. Dead birds don't bother me, though, it's little kids. It's little kids because any and every disease that they are carrying is communicable to you, as we are the same species. What do you have to worry about with squirrels? Maybe mange or lice, in my area they carry plague sometimes, and the worst would be rabies. No, I won't get rabies from a baby, but I will get anything and everything else that it has.
But, of course, for the parent, there can never be anything wrong with their progeny, and anyone who does not appreciate contact with it must surely be mad. They are so absorbed with the idea that they are going to use their child to do something cute that they don't even bother to exercise the hypothesis that someone may not appreciate being bedridden for days because of it. And, so, alas, they continue to try to be "cute," even when I very visibly soak my hands in sanitizer after I have handled their ticket/card in attempt to give them an unspoken hint.
I am young, and healthy in comparison to most people I know, but I can't help but worry about the elderly ladies who have such contact more frequently than I. I can get over almost anything this child throws at me, even though the doctor bills and time wasted is a nuisance, but I know that some of these other volunteers would not be able to. It seems to me that parents should think about their actions before assuming that everyone will appreciate handling their child's mouth-drippings.
End rant.
I volunteer at a natural history and science museum. I work the information desk in the front, usually recommending restaurants in the area or telling people how to navigate the local bus system. Most of our volunteers are elderly women, and we usually have a couple of them working at the ticket-checking booth (due to lack of public funding, a few years ago we began to charge museum admission) to make sure people have valid tickets, but also to scan membership cards and enter how many people in the party are visiting. Occasionally, the ticket-checkers will want to take breaks, so someone from the information desk will cover for them, thus, I end up spending time ticket-checking as well.
There is a trend I have noticed among parents who bring in their infants and toddlers. They always, always, always think that it's cute to give the tickets/membership cards to the fruit of their loins to hand to the ticket takers.
It usually goes like this: A couple walks in, each with a baby in his/her arms, and when they approach the ticket-checking booth they shove the ticket or card into the baby's hand (I almost feel as though they do this because they see that I'm female and think I will appreciate it). They subsequently come up to the booth and try to make the infant hand me the card. The infant doesn't understand a word of what the parent is saying, as it is an infant and therefore cannot talk (from the Latin infantus: not speaking), so the infant resorts to putting the ticket/card in its mouth before the parent grabs the infant's arm and puppeteers the infant to give me the ticket or card. I then have to touch said entry authorizing object, check the date on the ticket or scan the card, and give the object, dripping with slobber, back so the family can go through.
As a result, ticket-checkers get sick more than any other volunteer in the museum. I recently got over a very severe throat infection (I am not in school right now, so the only contact I had had with large groups of strangers I had had was the museum) that put me "out of commission" for almost two weeks.
This is coming from someone who has a good deal of contact with postmortem remains (I do the occasional taxidermy) of animals. Dead birds don't bother me, though, it's little kids. It's little kids because any and every disease that they are carrying is communicable to you, as we are the same species. What do you have to worry about with squirrels? Maybe mange or lice, in my area they carry plague sometimes, and the worst would be rabies. No, I won't get rabies from a baby, but I will get anything and everything else that it has.
But, of course, for the parent, there can never be anything wrong with their progeny, and anyone who does not appreciate contact with it must surely be mad. They are so absorbed with the idea that they are going to use their child to do something cute that they don't even bother to exercise the hypothesis that someone may not appreciate being bedridden for days because of it. And, so, alas, they continue to try to be "cute," even when I very visibly soak my hands in sanitizer after I have handled their ticket/card in attempt to give them an unspoken hint.
I am young, and healthy in comparison to most people I know, but I can't help but worry about the elderly ladies who have such contact more frequently than I. I can get over almost anything this child throws at me, even though the doctor bills and time wasted is a nuisance, but I know that some of these other volunteers would not be able to. It seems to me that parents should think about their actions before assuming that everyone will appreciate handling their child's mouth-drippings.
End rant.
