• TurboDiesel@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    The trope is your typical suburban, middle class white family are soft parents who let their kids get away with murder. You’ve seen the type - parents whose kids are on an absolute rampage and their response is to squat down and say, “Now Kayydenn, we don’t do that here.” The implication being that if the non-white kid did that their parents would beat the hell outta them.

    NB: I’m whiter than Wonder bread and 35 and I still wouldn’t dare call my mother by her first name.

    • A_Very_Big_Fan@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      whose kids are on an absolute rampage and their response is to squat down and say, “Now Kayydenn, we don’t do that here.”

      Retail workers know this all too well. I have a regular customer at our store’s gas station that actually rewards her kid for this behavior, and the most punishment he gets is her sternly yelling “Keagan!!!”

      He once took a squeegee out of the bucket and started splashing his mom, then after she wrestled it away from him he just went and got another and kept doing it. Then when she came back to the window to order her cigarettes, she gave him the change and said “let’s go, sweetie. :)” as she walked away, soaked in blue windshield cleaner. You can’t make this shit up.

      Another time he pressed the emergency stop button at the window, which canceled all of the other customer’s orders. When she came up to the window for cigarettes, she said she hoped it wasn’t too much of a pain, and I informed her that refunding all of the discounts was, in fact, a huge pain. All she had to say for herself was “oh. sorry 😬” and then she bought him a Reese’s.

      When she doesn’t let him out of the car, he will jump in the driver’s seat and lay on the horn. When she lets him out, he’ll toss the nozzles off of the pump, tear the napkins out of the dispensers, throw the squeegees into the road, knock over our cones, and play with whatever cleaning supplies he can find in our shed, which is unlocked now because he managed to break the lock. All while his mom is trailing behind him, cleaning up his messes half as fast as he can make new ones. At least she cleans everything up, but she is truly pathetic.

      I’m genuinely curious how this kid is gonna turn out when he grows up.

      • TurboDiesel@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Oh yeah. I firmly believe every single American should be forced to work either retail or food service for 1 year. Maybe it’ll teach them some goddamn empathy.

        My worst was working for Best Buy. One Christmas someone’s hellspawn decided that if he didn’t get a new PlayStation he was going to knock over the DVDs. All of them. It was like a cartoon; he just sprinted down the aisle with his arm out cackling like a tiny Joker.

    • WashedOver@lemmy.ca
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      7 months ago

      Then I think of the parents that throw their shoe/flip flop at a misbehaving kid. I don’t think first name reference would be used there either.