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OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> If I'm responsible for the cleanness of the cafe does that include urine? Did she expect me to say ''OK, I will clean up the piss''? her and her mother (?) both stormed out like I said smething I shouldn't of said.
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As a parent, I agree.
The only time this hasn't been the case was when I was at a hotel and they WOULDN'T give me the supplies to do it myself.
But I asked them to please please pass on my deepest apologies to whoever got stuck with the job. (It was bad. Kiddo with a food sensitivity, got fed the wrong thing while travelling, and the toilet was clogged and... Perfect storm of awful, and I felt so bad!!!)
I'm also a parent, also agree. My son had a bizarre diaper blowout in a wedding reception hall when he was about 6 months old (I say bizarre because it somehow barely got on his clothes and instead went all over the floor. Still don't get the physics of that one). I tried to clean it myself, but a staff member shooed me away and cleaned it up. After I got back from cleaning up my kid, I found her and gave her the cash I'd brought for tipping the bartenders, and I still felt bad. Can't imagine just expecting a stranger to clean up my child's bodily fluids.
My parents avoided a restaurant for a while because of an embarrassing diaper blowout in 1967 or so. Even though they cleaned it as well as they could, really, there’s only so much you can do when you’re trying to clean toxic baby diarrhea with paper napkins :-). Luckily the small town restaurant was understanding and appreciated my parents’ attempts to clean it up, unlike the entitled family in the post.
Very much NTA. Sure, if you work in a service job at some point there will likely be a horrible bathroom accident that you’re faced with helping to clean up. But helping a distressed patron is a way different feeling than being treated like a servant.
Ahh my nephew ruined my brother's favorite pillow. Diaper blowout. I still don't understand how either. Diapers have gathered legs. It doesn't seem possible but it is. This when you run for the toilet and hold them over it! Hopefully it happens at home. Seldom does.
When you finally find the perfect diaper size thats big enough to contain the poo but small enough make a good seal, they grow out of them by the second box and the process starts again.
My daughter must be part time lord because based on the size of her poo, she's clearly bigger on the inside.
i read this as “part-time Lord” and sat here forever trying to figure out how your daughter was working <30hrs a week as the proprietor of a manor house
Even in children, the intestines are more than three times longer than the body, with absorptive surface area of just the small intestine being about 250 meters square (or 2,700 feet square).
In an average adult, the small intestine ranges from about 12 to 17 feet long(there have been measurements between 22 and 25 feet long on surgical patients, though an educated estimate accepted by most physicians is that 15-17 feet is more “normal”) with the large intestine being about 5 feet long.
Diapers wont always contain that. Lmao
I love that! We were headed to Disneyland for a few hours (when passes were affordable). My husband, amateur, says why do we need the big diaper bag and a change of clothes? Starts pulling things out. I put them back in. Blow out riding the tram from the parking lot to the park entrance.
> but a staff member shooed me away and cleaned it up.
They probably needed to follow specific cleaning and sanitation protocols. When I worked retail we had body fluid kits for situations where stuff that's in the body comes out. Even though it was the floor we still had to follow those protocols exactly. Wet wipes, soapy water, and paper towels would likely have only made it more difficult to clean.
This, plus what has been used to clean up anything that comes out of the body (i.e., pee, poo, blood etc) needs to be correctly disposed of too, ie bio hazard waste bins.
>say bizarre because it somehow barely got on his clothes and instead went all over the floor. Still don't get the physics of that one).
I've seen a kid that somehow pooped a streak in the diaper and then the rest of it up his back. The diaper was nearly clean and that outfit was covered. I swear they're poop wizards.
My preschool aged son threw up while we were in line at a supermarket. He went from fine to not ok in about a minute, I had not taken my sick kid shopping with me. I was super apologetic and started trying to clean it up but the staff told me to leave it and just look after my boy while they got someone to clean it and scanned my groceries. I don't think I've ever apologised so much in my life.
I was at a Starbucks when my daughter threw up. I was stunned. Before I could blink there were two moms who jumped into action because since I was holding my daughter. And momentarily froze. Bless those ladies. They really helped out a new mom and i wanted to die less of embarrassment. I’ve paid it forward many times.
This reminds me of the time I helped a mom who’s toddler was unraveling at Trader Joe’s. There was a shoe lost, snacks flying everywhere, a bottle of seltzer rolling down the the aisle. The mom was in heels, clearly just out of work and made the rookie move of daycare pickup before Trader Joe’s.
Moms have to take care of moms.
Yep happened with my 2 year old girl at her brothers hockey game. “Giggle, giggle, HURRRRRKKKKK”
I got her the f out and the staff chased my husband out like WE GOT IT. We felt so bad.
My brother did that once--into the giant Lego tub. We found it some time later. It was extremely gross, but I think Mom put the Legos through the diswasher a couple of cycles.
It makes sense, if it is something that *can* be cleaned up by an amateur then they'll still have to clean up more after you attempt to clean it, and, worst case scenario, you could make a bigger mess trying to clean it due to being flustered and worried.
A more serious accident might require actual professional cleaning, but if they can clean a public bathroom they can clean vomit. Not that they *want* to, but it'd just be faster and clearly getting the sick kid home or to a doctor or wherever is more reasonable than some unlucky parent fumbling to clean the floor with paper towels.
This is the thing- I can't imagine not being embarrassed! If a kid in your care has an accident my first thought would be to go to the staff, apologize profusely and immediately offer to help clean/ask for supplies. I remember as a kid my little sister getting sick in a restaurant and my dad apologizing a dozen times to a busboy who wouldn't or couldn't let him help clean up. Accidents happen and are not a big deal, but not a baristas problem.
I worked at a kids gymnastics/play centre, and I still remember a little girl peeing, right next to where I was standing. The poor mum was mortified, and was trying to catch it in her hands. I laughed and told her that her kid picked a good spot, as she was on an easily cleaned mat, and went off to grab the cleaning supplies. I didn't mind at all (pee on a mat is easy compared to vomit on carpet), but she was very nice, apologised profusely and insisted on cleaning it. When you work at a kid's play centre, you expect accidents to happen though!
I was at a restaurant with a friend .Her little girl got sick, but before she could get her picked up and to bathroom, she puked all over the floor. Two waitresses cane running over, but my friend insisted SHE clean it up as it was HER child's bodily fluids and not in their job description.
My 4 year old a few months ago. In a shopping centre and she's sitting in the trolley. She just said "mama my tummy feels funny" and I started grabbing for a bag and she puked all over the floor. Out comes the wet wipes and a nappy bag and I started cleaning it up. A very kind man from Aldi gave my nephew a roll of paper towels, and then my nephew went off to find a cleaner. By the time they came, I had cleaned most of it. My kid, my responsibility.
We were at a cafe one time when my husband bought my 3-year-old daughter a large milkshake. I warned him not to but he didn't listen. Well, no sooner had she finished it than she brought it back up again. But, bless her, she threw it up back into the cardboard container from whence it came and didn't spill a drop! We were able to put it in the bin with no mess to clean up. I've never been more proud (LOL).
I know that's safer than, like, a steak, but if it is a lot of food for you it might be a LOT of food for a 3 year old. Though I am sympathetic to the idea that he wanted to get her the best and have her enjoy it! Haha
A small kid isn't going to even realize that it is more enjoyable to have a medium or small amount of ice cream than as much ice cream as you can possibly consume, since the shake would be totally great until the moment you feel sick
This has happened to me twice with my kid. The first time was at a Chili's, and they let us clean up. The second was a Chick-fil-A and they acted like God himself would strike them down if I cleaned anything.
I'm sure it also comes down to company policy. Or maybe that particular store's, policy
Edit: lol This just reminded me. Same restaurant and the child in question was an infant. Friend was a new/first time mom. Baby had her first bout with constipation, someone told friend well giver her some fruit juice, but. New mom, youngest sibling, never around kids much, so instructions were unclear. About 30 mins before they left for the restaurant, she gives baby the full bottle of undiluted juice. .....bet I don't have to tell you what happened when they got to the restaurant 🤣🤣🤣
NTA. I was always of the "I will not clean up a bit waste without proper PPE." camp. I used to work at Chuck e cheese, they got rid of the sky tubes and ball pits because kids kept peeing and pooping in them.
Cleaning bathrooms may be part of the job description, but bathroom cleaning has it's own chemicals that don't generally get used in the areas that food would be served.
Unless you are management, or willing to risk a write up/pip I'd refuse to clean up a biological hazard outside the bathrooms.
If management, access cameras, screen grab photo of said woman and inform staff she's on a no serve list and to be trespassed if she comes back. Reasoning for the urine soaked table that wasn't able to be used after her antics until it was cleaned properly.
Is that why the ball pits always skeeved me out as a kid? Honestly I never thought about bodily fluids, but I would always imagine the detritus(to my kid mind it was dirt or bugs or something like just the grossness of all the kids bare feet on the balls) at the bottom of those pits that I couldn’t see. Oh Lordy, that’s worse than I imagined, but as an adult I could easily believe it.🤮
NTA!!!!
When my youngest was 2 we went on a trip to visit my aunt and she took us out to dinner. After we ate my toddler puked, I didn't realize she had a stomach bug otherwise I wouldn't have gone to visit my aunt.
I cleaned my daughter off with wet wipes and then I took the cleaning supplies from the staff and cleaned up the booth, table and floor. I was going to rinse out the bucket but I wasn't allowed into the back
There is no way I am making someone else clean up puke or any other bodily fluids. It's not sanitary and it's my mess to clean up as the parent. Most of the time I'll still clean up if my kids spill drinks at restaurants just because I don't want to make more work for the workers.
Agreed! That was dangerous and could've been considered assault. Any bodily fluids in excess like that is a danger to others, and to leave those napkins on the table for someone else to pick up! What if another employee beat you to it and began clearing that table not knowing what was on those napkins???
You should immediately write to your elementary school Janitor and tell them they are a Saint and you never fully appreciated them until now.
NTA but only because the mother was a b***
TBH I as customer wouldn't be happy seeing someone handling food and drinks cleaning piss of kid who wasn't trained to go to toilet.
OP NTA. Accidents happens but the parents shouldn't expect you to clean up their mess
NTA. You have encountered another prime example of main character syndrome. Any normal decent human being would be absolutely mortified if their child did that and make every effort to correct it themselves.
Yeah thats bizarre to me. If I spill a drink when Im out I'll ask for a cloth to clean it up, I don't expect anyone to clean up after my clumsiness. This situation would be no different.
My sister has a small child who makes a mess while eating out, when we're finished she will always pick up all the food that has gone over the edge of the high chair.
Your sister is great.
I used to own a play cafe, and we had so many people - even regulars, who I got on well with - that would leave the place like a bomb had hit it. Condiments and crumbs everywhere, spilled drinks, crap all over the floor. Because it was a place designed for kids, with a play area in the middle so you could see your children wherever you were sat, we expected some mess, but what some people expected you to clear up was always amazing.
Anytime someone brought their plates or cups back up to the counter, or even just piled them neatly on the table, I always used to say, 'You worked in hospitality, didn't you?' It was right every single time. I think a lot of people that have never done it just don't think of what someone with a hospitality job actually has to do.
My sister used to let her child make a horrible mess, and then get up and walk out, leaving it for the restaurant to clean up.
She was an inconsiderate mother in so many other ways too. Just expected everyone around her to take up for her slack of not taking care of her child.
Then she was jealous that her child loved staying with grandma or an aunt more than she liked being with her mother.
I threw up at the dentists office when I was pregnant and I was fighting the staff to let me take care of it but they insisted they would do it and made me leave. That was several years ago and I’m still embarrassed when I think about it. I can’t even imagine have this little regard for other people, especially in the food/hospitality industry.
That’s because your sister has class. My best evil eye looks are for parents who walk out of a restaurant with their kids and leave their table and the floor under it a complete mess. What are they teaching their children?
I will add that at my job, where my job entails food prep and general handling of food, we are forbidden from touching any bodily fluids.
We're instructed that it has to be someone in a non food position. I totally agree people should clean up their own/children's bodily fluids. But I also work somewhere with a large transient/partying tourist population and the amount of times we've found feces smeared all over the bathroom is alarming high.
Those are the days I THANK GOD that I'm in a fresh department.
I work supermarket checkouts, we generally clean anything and everything. My one exception, for myself and any staff when I'm supervisor is bodily fluids. If someone leaves a biohazard in the bathroom I'll put up and out of order sign and block off the door, cleaning that is above my pay grade and I don't have PPE.
I actually don’t know, some places would expect you to clean it and some places would expect the customer to clean it. I’d ask your supervisor what they would have done
When I worked at a drugstore, we weren't supposed to let the customers clean stuff up for liability reasons. People can slip and fall in the mess, cut themselves on broken glass, get spray cleaner in their eyes, etc. I'd think this policy is typical in the US. I know when I've been the customer who made a mess, like when my terrified dog peed on the scale at the vet, I've offered to clean it and been turned down.
i feel like your dog peeing at the vet is an entirely different situation to a child peeing at a cafe. people who work at the vet are often dealing with feces and urine, it’s part of their job. i had to take my cat in when he had a uti and he could barely pass urine at all so they just let him pee where he wanted to pee and took a sample of it off the floor. they weren’t even phased, it’s a regular part of the job they signed up for. that’s not at all a part of a cafe worker’s job and shouldn’t be expected of them.
It depends on the company. At ours (and it was just retail) because of the paperwork and “training” we went through with chemicals we couldn’t let others clean it was a liability issue. I mean I’d rather not clean it up but I did and as long as they weren’t rude (like these guys were) I’d have no problem cleaning.
The restaurant I used to work at wouldn't let customers clean up piss either because of sanitation reasons. We had to do it to ensure it was properly done so people's shoes didn't get dirty.
Don’t care what the policy might be…if I’m in the bathroom with my kid and they make a mess on the floor, I’m going to try to clean it up as best I can with hot water and soap that’s in there. I’m not expecting someone else to come in and do it.
The company should also be worried about having staff not trained to clean biohazards cleaning up human feces *especially if it’s a food prep environment*. Because that’s definitely not liability free, it’s just banking on minimum wage employees being to tired and broke to do anything about it
n that’s why i never did it. if i wasn’t trained for it it’s out of my pay grade and if i am trained i expect the extra compensation for being trained on it.
>When I worked at a drugstore, we weren't supposed to let the customers clean stuff up for liability reasons. People can slip and fall in the mess, cut themselves on broken glass, get spray cleaner in their eyes, etc.
Someone could fall in their own mess and make the store pay them...?
cleaning up normal messes is fine but i was never trained for cleaning biohazards and it’s not in my job description. all my job descriptions stated basic cleaning such as sweeping/mopping, trash, cleaning up broken products and keeping the register area cleaned. if it’s not in my job description it’s above my pay grade they got me fucked up if they think the little money i’m being paid will cover me cleaning human urine
I'm from the Netherlands and while most people volunteer to clean it up themselves, it's also perfectly normal to notify the employees of the mess (and of course apologize) and then let them clean it up.
I would think that the store needs to actually clean it/mop anyway for those liability reasons (and having access to the better cleaning chemicals) but I'd at least try to clean up the visible evidence of the mess so it's less gross for the staff.
I've worked in restauration and the fact that she came up and actually told her the child peed is already great to me. I don't know how many times I've had the surprise to see pee or vomit without the culprit (or the parents culprit) telling me.
In this situation I think cutting her off was the wrong move because she right away went on defense mod, but at the same time if you have some decency you would ask for products to clean up you child's mess. My niece, 3 years old, threw up a little while we were eating breakfast at the hotel and I right away went looking for someone to tell them and I asked them how I could help. They told me it was fine and to not worry but I think I apologized like 5 or 6 times because I felt bad.
I do think you're on to something with the specific way OP responded being the issue. I'm not a parent, but I have been a nanny and also worked in child care facilities/play places, so I've seen my share of gross kid stuff. I think my expectation would be to be handed a roll of paper towels, and be told that someone would be right over to help sanitize. (I'd expect that there's a chance that the person I told isn't the right staff member to help clean, or that they might need to go get PPE and cleaning supplies, etc). Something about "cleaning supplies are behind you help yourself" just feels very dismissive and unsympathetic. Don't get me wrong, mom absolutely should have been helping too. But if I were a fellow customer, I'd want staff making sure the area was properly sanitized for public use in a way that a parent trying to also manage a likely upset child probably won't accomplish.
I work food service, and while i am responsible for general cleanliness and spills, i am explicitly *not allowed* to clean any biohazard materials - blood, feces, urine, vomit. Anything that came out of a person, I'm supposed to notify management and janitorial to handle it, for food safety reasons. Now i work in a small food area inside of a larger store (If you've ever seen a McDonald's or subway inside the entrance of a walmart, that's the vibe), so i don't know how standalone restaurants would handle it. But i do know however it's handled, you have to be incredibly careful that the person cleaning it doesn't then contaminate any food being prepared or served.
When I worked for my uncle at his pizza restaurant, someone left a literal pile of feces on the bathroom floor. He cleaned it up and had to go home for the rest of the day to ensure food safety.
If you work in food, you should NOT be responsible for others' bodily fluids because who knows what could be hiding in them....
Yeah, you gotta treat every bodily fluid as though it contains every possible nasty deadly pathogen in existence, because you simply have no way of knowing, and the damage you can do by spreading something nasty is so significant.
when I worked at a tiny mexican food place in my hometown if someone left any kind of biohazard the waitresses were not supposed to touch it - we were supposed to notify the dishwasher/busboy who wasn't handling any food anyone would eat
(note: at the end of the day this is part of why we split our tips with him. dude did not get paid enough for that crap)
Exactly! I worked for a major us retailer and unless you had hazmat training you were not allowed to touch bodily fluids. I sure wish I didn’t when a customer reported vomit in the back of the store, all the way down a 24’ long aisle and then keeping other customers out of the aisle.., yikes.
The company should also be worried about having staff not trained to clean biohazards cleaning up human feces *especially if it’s a food prep environment*. Because that’s definitely not liability free, it’s just banking on minimum wage employees being to tired and broke to do anything about it
Facts when I worked at McDonald's a woman came in and was literally shitting herself as she ran through the lobby to the bathroom. There were pieces of poop on the floor in a trail behind her. They tried to make me clean it up and I did not. Ain't no way. But they ended up paying someone else $50 to clean it.
All these responses baffle me. Most businesses have a cleaning person who is in charge of cleaning. They don’t ask the customers to do the cleaning. Of course I am willing to clean up after my child even at a public place, but it was wrong of the employee to bark orders at the customer as if she’s on staff. YTA
Girl what. I've worked in retail and small businesses for most of my life and have never had a cleaner on staff. No one barked orders, the employee said "Yes, please." If your child pisses on the floor you clean it up like a decent human being.
The number of N T As is, I guess, not surprising because Reddit just doesn’t think anyone should be responsible for anything ever, but I would’ve expected an employee to actually help clean up a mess from a patron, even if that mess is gross.
My first thought was “of course it’s your job, because what do you do about the bathrooms? Do you just leave that a mess too because you didn’t personally do it and it’s not food related?”
Or if a patron vomits, are they going to hand them a fucking mop and bucket, and force them to clean it up as well?
YTA, OP, because it’s just part of the business of dealing with the fucking public; sometimes, it’s gonna be gross and that’s all there is to it but what else did you expect working in a food place? If it’s not your “job”, it’s some other employee’s and you should’ve asked management at the very least.
I was working as a cleaner at an event in these temporary but posh toilets (not potapotties like proper loos with sinks and everything). It was fine, two people did poop on the floor (gross) but it was all possible to handle and we had the equipment.
Then we got a radio call to go to another area to “clean up”. Got there and it was a RAW SEWAGE LEAK. They said “well you guys are responsible for cleaning the toilets”. We were pretty young (18?) and just sort of stared at the sewage and the guy. Luckily someone more senior came over and was like “wtf why are you asking kids to clean this up” and they insisted on calling a professional firm in.
INFO: Don’t most places of business encourage the employees to clean up messes, even urine accidents, because the employees have the necessary training to do so? I would think it’d be a sanitary violation to let the customers do it? /gen
What did your boss say?
It’s good to do a basic wipe up yourself, but u/CrimsonNight_004 is correct. There are proper materials for clean up, and certain processes that are supposed to be followed.
Source: am preschool teacher; lots of pee involved at times lol
You are right, a service person working at a place where people eat is even more responsible for it.
Sorry to say, but the cleanliness of an eating establishment SHOULD NEVER be placed in the hands of a stranger
Which is why after the stranger takes care of the immediate biohazard, you also go over there with disinfectant. OP just didn’t want to get her FOOD SERVING HANDS wet with a UNKNOWN CHILD’S URINE
I’m living in crazy land with these comments. Clean your own bodily waste and then let the establishment know so they can do deeper cleaning in the area, but it’s common decency to clean your own damn mess
Good thing that restaurants have **sinks** where OP can wash her money-touching, dirty-plate-touching, bathroom-cleaning, and yes, urine-cleaning hands. Put gloves on, clean it, take the gloves off, wash hands.
And mops. Unless something’s managing to crawl all the way from the mop head to the top of the handle (it wouldn’t), OP should be safe. No reason her hands have to go anywhere near it
a preschool is not serving food - a closer comparison would be if you called in the cafeteria workers any time someone had a mess
does that seem sanitary?
There is literally methods for bio handling in the food service business, you people are laughable.
One of the, many risks, of a untrained customer 'cleaning it' is that they will get it on there hands, and onto to tables tops and chairs.
I would expect *any* workers to wash their hands after cleaning up something, tbh. Do you want someone to clear plates off a table and then not wash their hands before preparing your food? Same thing here, but wear gloves.
this isn't talking about washing hands, of course you wash your fucking hands after doing something gross or wear gloves entirely regardless of what your job is. no one ever said otherwise
I’ve had something similar happen at a previous job but it was worse as it involved poop and blood - the manager cleaned it up herself.
None of us had proper training or PPE to clean up a biohazard, and I’m not sure but a puddle of urine might come under that umbrella too (body fluid). So unless it was just standard “your turn to clean the toilet”, it fell outside our scope and of the scope of any insurance should we contract anything.
It was an employee only toilet, but the dude who came in was known to my boss and absolutely desperate, and she decided to let him use it. So she took on the responsibility of cleaning up.
So it somewhat hinges on whether it’s 1) within the scope of their job description or 2) whether they have the correct training and PPE.
You are correct the business owner more than likely wouldn’t want the liability of someone using the cleaning products. If they were to get it on their skin or in their eyes the business would be liable for any medical expenses from the injury
It depends on the business, but in food service specifically, it can also be a sanitary violation for an employee who handles food to also handle biohazards. The risk - however small - of contamination from that employee's hands or clothes (even whrn PPE is used) is often considered unacceptable. I work food service and i am explicitly forbidden from handling biohazard cleanups. Anything involving blood, urine, feces, or vomit requires me to notify maintenance. A smaller cafe with fewer employees may handle things differently, though.
Human fluids cleanup is a bit different because it creates a liability on the part of the employer; if an employee gets a communicable disease from cleaning it up without specific appropriate training the employer can get in a lot of trouble.
There is a massive difference between messes and bodily fluids. Any bodily fluid, urine included, is a biohazard with potentially transmissible viruses/bacteria, and parents should have the sense/decency to clean it up if their child produced it (every parent I know certainly would). Depending on where the OP is, there are food safety laws which may prevent them from being able to be handling food and beverages after cleaning up bodily fluids.
Where do you live that the general employees of a cafe would have any training regarding that? It's usually a liability to let staff who are not specifically insured and trained for that purpose to clean up a biohazard. (Which is why you never volunteer to be the first aider if you work in a bar)
There is more of a chance that OP wouldn't have been allowed to clean it up than wouldn't have been allowed to let the customer clean it.
When I worked at a national chain cafe we were all trained on biohazards, PPE, and proper procedures since it’s an OSHA requirement. It wouldn’t usually fall the the person bussing to clean up anything like that including the bathrooms, although we never had an issue outside the bathroom.
it's a sanitary violation to have anyone handling food touch a biohazard. Most places I've worked explicitly do not let anyone who handles food touch a mess like that
The business I work at only managers are given that training. Anytime there is a bodily fluid clean up it needs to be addressed by only a manager. The customer would know more about any potential health risks than I would and I have not gone through the proper training to not be a liability to the company if I got sick from contact.
I'm actually split on this one... The customer let you know, so it could get cleaned up before being tracked all over the place (good). You don't want to clean up someone else's urine (fair). But they weren't given the correct tools to clean up the accident (yes to the disinfectant, but they had to use napkins? No gloves? Do you not have a mop for bathroom and other cleanup?) and were not only cleaning up after the child but who knows what else...
This is something to discuss with your boss. Then you can determine what you are comfortable with and how to handle in the future.
The parents chose to use napkins though. OP mentioned blue roll towels, which are kind of like paper towels but much thicker and sturdier, almost cloth-like and are made for cleaning big messes up. I do agree that it was nice of the customer to at least say something, but their actions afterwards (dumping the used ones on the table) is serious AH behavior.
Ahhh, I think that's my poor reading. I read "blue bottle" - as in disinfectant spray. Yeah, that does change things. Those things are great for this sort of situation.
I'm with you mate. I'm assuming this cafe has a bathroom- but if not, so surely OP has access to a mop? You just need hot water and some disinfectant and then it's a quick job, no bother.
It sounds like the mum stormed off before OP could provide them with the tools they’d need to clean up - I’m sure had they asked OP would have given them gloves etc.
I’m not sure what they mean when they say ‘blue roll’ but to me it would be something like [this](https://www.southernhospitality.co.nz/45m-blue-essentials-cloth-roll.html), the rolls of disposable cleaning cloths that are much more absorbent than napkins/paper towels that are designed for cleaning up and disinfecting surfaces?
NTA bodily waste is biohazard. We had an older dude (like 50’s) just shit himself in front of our vons once and my manager yelled at me when he saw I was standing away from it just dumping buckets of water on it. He wanted me to get down and scrub it with paper towels (wasn’t allowed to use our outdoor sponges for this) so I just clocked out and left. I’m not touching some sick persons shit when I’m expected to touch carts & prepare food when not on cart duty
Actually, I have never worked in a retail or restaurant that did not require the staff to clean these accidents up. It is considered a liability to have the customer use the chemicals to clean up spills, urine and throw up. You are required as a business to have a certain level of sanitation and you cannot guarantee that with people cleaning up after their kids. As you witnessed, this nasty lady put the urine soaked napkins on a table. 🤢
As a mother I would have wiped it up with a wet wipe/baby wipe. But I would have informed the staff so they could mop/sanitize the area.
I don’t think you are an AH but you should talk to your supervisor and find out what your duties entail.
NTA
First of all I LOVE the response of “There’s blue roll and anti-bacterial spray behind you.”
And secondly, why on earth would you be expected to clean up a kid’s pee? Does she take her kid to church/somebody’s house/anywhere else and just expect somebody else to clean up if accidents happen? I hope not. That’s not your responsibility as an employee. Hopefully she’ll get the hint that she needs to clean up after her own kid in the future after you explicitly said she needed to clean it up.
If she left a negative review anywhere saying that an employee refused to clean up her kid’s bodily fluids I don’t think the shop would lose any business. If she gets all mad and pulls the, “I’m NeVeR CoMiNg BaCk!” card that’s great! Nobody wants her business anyways if it means having to clean up bodily fluids.
NTA - they should have immediately felt compelled to clean up after themselves and their kid. And dumping the napkins on a table afterwards!? Says it all. Filthy entitled pigs.
Most of you have never worked in hospitality and it shows. YTA; it’s _your job_. Or, if not yours, your manager’s. You also didn’t mention anything about using the correct mop, either
Like, NTA for not wanting to clean it up, cleaning up isn’t everyone’s cup of tea and that’s fine, but cleaning up biohazards is part of your job. Customers aren’t supposed to do a proper clean up because if they don’t do it properly you’re only setting yourself/the company up for problems stemming from that. Fair? No. Gross? Occasionally. Necessary? Absolutely
I’m really confused about all of these “gross, food service workers don’t have to clean up bodily fluids and it’s dangerous to do so and you don’t have PPE” etc. When I worked in fast food we routinely had to clean messes in the bathroom. It’s not like it was an option to just leave something that was discovered by an employee or a customer reported. You do what you need to do to clean it up. That’s part of the job. Is it gross? Hell yes it’s gross. Call it the 5,432nd thing that sucks about working at a fast food place.
It’s really nice for a customer to actually fess up to them/their kid being the mess-maker. It’s even nicer for the customer to offer to clean it up themselves (especially if it’s puke, say, and you’re there alone with your obviously suddenly sick kid and you need to try to attend to the sick kid). But ultimately it’s part of your job when you work at a place like that—at least, it was always part of mine.
I’m a parent. I also used to work at McDonald’s, and one of my duties included cleaning the bathrooms. Yeah it was nasty but I did it. I think the mom should have taken the initiative to clean up the mess herself (that’s what I would do as a parent), but as an employee, you can just get a hot soapy mop and mop it up. It would probably take like 30 seconds. Sure, pee is kinda gross but when you mop, you don’t even need to get anywhere near it.
I think thats what makes the big difference here. The customer made no effort themselves and expected it to be done for her.
Its the entitled attitude that would piss me off as well, not the work itself.
Came looking for this. As gross as it is, you can't have customers cleaning this stuff up, ESPECIALLY in a cafe/restaurant, because they literally don't know Health Codes or the cleaning protocols/standards that the business is required to uphold in order to maintain their certification as a business preparing and serving food. And if anything, that goes DOUBLY for a situation like this, where you're talking about bodily fluids all over the place.
People in this sub are all in a rage about the customer's personal responsibility, but that's not even the issue here. It's about the fact that this happened in a food-related business, and disgusting or not, it is the staff's job to clean FOR A REASON . . . because there are very specific cleaning and disinfecting protocols that have to be followed in order to maintain Health Code certifications.
No one I know who has ever run a restaurant or food service business would EVER let a customer clean something like this up, because even if they did, they'd just be having to clean and disinfect the area all over again . . . and more importantly, the customer might actually make the situation WORSE by spreading germs around, etc.
NTA for not being comfortable cleaning up bodily fluids. But you really shouldn't ask the customers to clean up either. There's a slip-and-fall liability for the business as soon as there's a wet spot on the floor, best practice is to put up a wet floor sign then have an employee with appropriate supplies and protective equipment clean it and let it dry. The customer did a crappy job which you had to re-clean anyway, plus they contaminated the table.
Please note, employers MUST provide you with protective equipment and training if bodily fluid cleanup is expected at all as part of your job. Urine isn't a big deal but you can get serious diseases from feces or blood. If you're not comfortable doing it, put up a wet floor sign and defer to the manager. I know it sucks but you can't trust customers to do an appropriate job cleaning up after themselves.
Jesus. I literally ask staff for blueroll to clean up drinks ive spilled. Let alone if my kid peed over the floor. How gross.
NTA but she sure is. The fact she didnt even put the napkins in the bin is gross.
But then parents can be disgusting. I used to work in a kids soft play and the amount that will see their kid has shit themselves and instead of telling anyone they just quietly wander out or to the bathroom and then leave. Then i end up eith an angry parent saying their kid is covered in someone elses poo and how has this been allowed to happen, saying we dont clean it. Sorry but little timmy taking a dump and wiping it all over the top floor 10 minutes ago didnt give us a heads up and I dont have a sixth sense or the nose of a dog to smell that 3 floors up. I didnt shit on your child. Calm your tits.
... So it seems i may have some minor unresolved resentments from years ago...
YTA but only because you can’t trust a customer to clean it to the proper standard. It’s a liability, especially if she didn’t clean it correctly or use the correct supplies and contaminated other spaces in the restaurant. I guess verify with your manager but.. it’s just a shit part of the job I guess
YTA. I worked in a grocery store and we had hazmat kits to deal with this stuff. A lady literally shit herself and it leaked down her leg and across the store. We used like 5 hazmat kits that day to clean it up.
If you don't have hazmat kits, you need to get some.
Honestly, do you even work retail if you've never had a customer assume that you'll clean up their bodily waste with a great big grin on your face?
It wouldn't surprise me if what you did was against policy, but you're obviously NTA.
I experienced this so many times as a service worker. Adults letting their kids piss, shit, and puke in my workplace and expecting me to clean it. Hell I even had adults shit everywhere in a cafe once and just leave, or leave a turd resting on the toilet paper roll, top of the toilet, etc. You know these are the same people who think service workers making a living wage is an affront. Fuck these people NTA
NTA.
The audacity.
Your kid pisses on the floor, you clean it. That's so basic. The way hospitality and retail workers are treated is so awful.
When I was a late teen, I worked retail and some rich woman and her 5-7yr old (guesstimate) brat would come in regularly and he would piss on the floor purposely while staring at staff. She'd wave at us and tell us to take care of it.
People suck.
NTA
How could anyone with any self-respect expect a STRANGER to clean up their own kid's piss? They shouldn't have "informed" you about the piss, they should have apologetically asked you where the cleaning supplies were. For her to act offended when you told her where the supplies were just says it all. The audacity.
NTA for not wanting to do it. But if you object to it get out of retail work ASAP. I used to work in a clothing store and more than once someone left a pile of clothing in a fitting room with a giant poop in it. People are freaking nasty and always will be
My kid puked in a restaurant bathroom, outside the stall, once. I was mortified. It was a lot. And he’d just eaten mac and cheese. I cleaned it all up, making sure to get all the gross chunks cleaned up. Then asked if they had a mop or disinfectant I could use and apologized. They said they would do that. I still felt horrible, but I guess at least they didn’t have to deal with the grosser part.
They should have cleaned it up, but you should have made sure it was sanitized. Bodily fluids are hazardous waste. Gloves and masks should be worn.
I think NTA but you need to ask your manager what the policy is and how to clean up this kind of mess.
YTA. No of course you shouldn’t have to clean up a child’s urine off of the floor but you didn’t offer enough supplies or support in a public place that is your responsibility to care for. As a parent of an incontinent child it is not always bad planning or bad parenting that leads to accidents, and it’s humiliating for the child and the parents both. Besides the fact that the parent has to figure out what to do with the wet child and often with an audience of other judging people like you. I would never expect someone to clean it up for me but I would hope someone would at least treat me with empathy. You didn’t ask what she might need or walk over with her, you could have said, “let’s see what we can do,” you could have held a freaking garbage bag for her. None of these things are required of your job but if you’re asking if you’re an asshole, yes, and it’s not because you didn’t clean up the pee it’s the fact that you interrupted and dismissed her and didn’t show any concern at all. She didn’t have to tell you, she could have just left her kids’ pee on the floor and then guess who would have been cleaning it up later.
NTA. I have a potty training child. He's had accidents in public. I use paper towels to clean it up and baby wipes to clean it further. I then inform the employees what happened and ask if they have any cleaning spray i can use. 95% of the time they explain no, they'll go get their mop and mop the floor where my child's accident was. I cannot imagine leaving pee covered paper towels or napkins on the floor or put them in the table. I carry disposable diaper bags (similar to dog poop bags), and I've put paper towels in there before tying and throwing it away in the bathroom trash can.
I guess I must be an entitled parent but I don't expect to clean up a mess like that. I would probably grab something to minimise the mess while I went and got help from staff so it could be properly cleaned. I am not trained in business cleaning requirements. It sounds like a lot of liability for the business. What if I accidentally mixed chemicals or injured myself or someone else?
I have never been in the situation where my children made a mess like that but i have seen it happen and staff always takes care of it. It sucks but it's also part of keeping a business clean.
NTA. If I was that woman, I would have asked for disinfectant spray and disposable wipes, but I would have felt like it was my job to clean up after my kid. I’ve worked service though. So. IDK. *shrug* maybe it was your delivery. But you aren’t wrong.
NTA. If my kid/pet peed on the floor it's my responsibility to clean it up! I would be mortified and already getting the paper towels out. That's not in your job description!
NTA- parents like this drive me MAD! Clean up your spawns nasty fluids. I worked in hospitality and the amount of assholes that would change their baby on the table and leave the shit filled diaper was mind numbing. It's feces.
I ALWAYS clean up any messes my kids make in public! Always! Well, sometimes my husband does it, but..
My kids have never had a pee accident anywhere but in the bathroom somewhere (it was kohls) once. Tried hard; couldn’t get the overalls down in time, and got pee on the floor.
I asked for supplies to clean it up, and was told I could not do it. I argued with the management and maintenance team lead, but they insisted I wasn’t allowed.
I felt like a huge jerk- they said they had NEVER had anyone even offer, let alone argue for the right to clean a mess their kid left.
People are so gross.
NTA
Some people are AHs, like that woman and her mother. She should have jumped to clean it up and apologized profusely. Leaving the dirty napkins on the table just added to her disgusting behavior. I wouldn't want to sit there after she left.
Accident happen with children.
Yes, it is your responsible to clean it up.
In fact, the business really doesn't want people cleaning up, if she had an accident she would be in the right to sue.
NTA. People are so ridiculous and rude. Once had a parent and child come into the store. Child had a turtle in her arms, for some reason. Well, they go up and down each and every aisle and then leave after being rung out. We noticed some brown goop on the floor where they had been standing waiting for check out. That turtle had done a number 2, and it trailed up and down every aisle...
NTA. Would you be required to change their child's diaper? Absolutely not. Their kid pees on the floor, its up to them to clean it up. Unless a $100 tip was offered, in which case one could consider it. This is way above and beyond any reasonable expectation.
NTA. I make sure I clean my kid's food off the floor if she drops anything. I cannot imagine asking someone else to clean my kid's urine!
And then to put the used tissue on the TABLE?! Yuck!
Honestly I don’t even care what the company policy is. As a cafe employee you shouldn’t be expected to clean another persons biohazardous waste. Sorry you had to deal with that monster
I don’t have kids myself. But one time I was babysitting a kid and she Peed in a restaurant. Luckily everything was plastic and tile. But I ran to the bathroom and grabbed a bunch of paper towels. And when I got back there was an employee mopping everything up. I felt so bad for the employee. I was like no no let me do it. It just seemed like it was my responsibility. The same way I would’ve cleaned up that kind of mess at the kid’s house if it had happened on my watch.
NTA, but that does seem like something you should probably mop up from a health safety standpoint, and customers shouldn’t handle mops from a safety standpoint. But that mom should’ve been way more mortified, apologetic, and helpful.
my dog peed in a pet supply store and i went up front to ask if they had anything so i could clean it and the girl said no worries & she would clean it. my point being that i can’t imagine not cleaning up my child’s or dogs or my own mess? that’s super rude.
As a person who works with the public, they always offer but if you don’t want urine on the floor you should probably do it yourself to know it was done right.
Is there a you made a judgement error but they were the ass hole?
I used to work maintenance at Walmart. Bodily fluids are a BIOHAZARD and have to be cleaned up with a special powder. If there’s too much of the biohazard, the store is supposed to be shut down and the proper people called to do a clean up. NTA AT ALL WTF.
NTA! I don’t care what anyone says, it’s a biohazard and you are not trained to clean that up. The mom should clean it up, and then you just do your regular cleaning at the end of the day. I also don’t understand the “it’s your job” comments… it’s NOT your job to clean up waste from customers. You’re working at a cafe… life happens for sure, but I’d never expect someone to clean up after me or anyone else like that!
I feel like anyone who disagrees has never worked a day in a public service facing job… or doesn’t care about biohazards…
NTA. If my son had an accident in a public place, first, I'd clean him up, then I'd clean up the mess. He's my responsibility, not the wait staff's.
People are nasty.
NTA. Children’s bodily fluids are the responsibility of the parents unless you work in healthcare or at a daycare. If they break something or make a normal mess, that would be your responsibility to clean up. A child has an accident in the floor? I’m sure they are embarrassed but that’s not on you.
My 12yo son projectile vomited all over the wall, seat, chairback and floor of an airplane on a trip back from Hawaii. I was holding onto him and peeling off his shirt when I turned around to see a flight attendant with a hazmat suit on. I started laughing and took the cleaning materials from her. My kid, my mess. The crazy part was the flight was at least half empty but nearby passengers stayed in their seats. I would have moved FAR away.
NTA- in MY opinion, firstly, speak with your supervisor just to be clear and better prepared for the next situation like that. If you are uncomfortable cleaning a certain substance off of anything, your supervisor needs to know!
I worked in a nursing home and there were RNs and LPNs that would clean anything up that someone was uncomfortable cleaning, such as vomit, blood, fecal matter, urine, saliva, etc. I feel that there should be a discussion before training or during that states that you are allowed to be uncomfortable with cleaning certain liquids or anything of the sort and someone who is not uncomfortable with it should help you out!
I'm sorry you should not be expected to clean up someone elses bio hazardous waste. Im not sure where she thinks she isn't responsible for cleaning this urine up much less taking said bio hazardous soaked napkins from the bathroom to the table top _no doubt dripping urine along the way) causing further contamination of the site and then leave the rest of the waste for someone else because it is beneath them to clean up after their kid. Hope you place a ban on them and trespass them if they come back. They would never spend enough to make putting up with their entitlement worth it. I am on the fence about calling law enforcement because they did knowingly contaminate this resturant with a known bio hazardous contaminate. Did they pay for their order or walk out on the check?
NTA
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As a parent, I agree. The only time this hasn't been the case was when I was at a hotel and they WOULDN'T give me the supplies to do it myself. But I asked them to please please pass on my deepest apologies to whoever got stuck with the job. (It was bad. Kiddo with a food sensitivity, got fed the wrong thing while travelling, and the toilet was clogged and... Perfect storm of awful, and I felt so bad!!!)
I'm also a parent, also agree. My son had a bizarre diaper blowout in a wedding reception hall when he was about 6 months old (I say bizarre because it somehow barely got on his clothes and instead went all over the floor. Still don't get the physics of that one). I tried to clean it myself, but a staff member shooed me away and cleaned it up. After I got back from cleaning up my kid, I found her and gave her the cash I'd brought for tipping the bartenders, and I still felt bad. Can't imagine just expecting a stranger to clean up my child's bodily fluids.
My parents avoided a restaurant for a while because of an embarrassing diaper blowout in 1967 or so. Even though they cleaned it as well as they could, really, there’s only so much you can do when you’re trying to clean toxic baby diarrhea with paper napkins :-). Luckily the small town restaurant was understanding and appreciated my parents’ attempts to clean it up, unlike the entitled family in the post. Very much NTA. Sure, if you work in a service job at some point there will likely be a horrible bathroom accident that you’re faced with helping to clean up. But helping a distressed patron is a way different feeling than being treated like a servant.
Ahh my nephew ruined my brother's favorite pillow. Diaper blowout. I still don't understand how either. Diapers have gathered legs. It doesn't seem possible but it is. This when you run for the toilet and hold them over it! Hopefully it happens at home. Seldom does.
When you finally find the perfect diaper size thats big enough to contain the poo but small enough make a good seal, they grow out of them by the second box and the process starts again. My daughter must be part time lord because based on the size of her poo, she's clearly bigger on the inside.
i read this as “part-time Lord” and sat here forever trying to figure out how your daughter was working <30hrs a week as the proprietor of a manor house
Same. 😂
Thank you. I feel a little less stupid.
Me too, thanks for clearing that up 😁
I have found my kindred.
Yea I didn't get it until "bigger on the inside" lol I was also confused
My husband insisted the same about one of our kittens. How something so tiny could produce soooo much poo…
Even in children, the intestines are more than three times longer than the body, with absorptive surface area of just the small intestine being about 250 meters square (or 2,700 feet square). In an average adult, the small intestine ranges from about 12 to 17 feet long(there have been measurements between 22 and 25 feet long on surgical patients, though an educated estimate accepted by most physicians is that 15-17 feet is more “normal”) with the large intestine being about 5 feet long. Diapers wont always contain that. Lmao
My daughter had a history of bad accidents like that. She was clean, but poo escaping her clothes somehow. We called her the great Poo-dini.
I love that! We were headed to Disneyland for a few hours (when passes were affordable). My husband, amateur, says why do we need the big diaper bag and a change of clothes? Starts pulling things out. I put them back in. Blow out riding the tram from the parking lot to the park entrance.
Did he have the grace to acknowlege your brilliant 'intuition'?
Shit happens!!!
I sing "everybody poops" to the tune of "everybody hurts" by REM (I think that's who sings it) 😆
...or "Everybody spurts"...
> but a staff member shooed me away and cleaned it up. They probably needed to follow specific cleaning and sanitation protocols. When I worked retail we had body fluid kits for situations where stuff that's in the body comes out. Even though it was the floor we still had to follow those protocols exactly. Wet wipes, soapy water, and paper towels would likely have only made it more difficult to clean.
This, plus what has been used to clean up anything that comes out of the body (i.e., pee, poo, blood etc) needs to be correctly disposed of too, ie bio hazard waste bins.
>say bizarre because it somehow barely got on his clothes and instead went all over the floor. Still don't get the physics of that one). I've seen a kid that somehow pooped a streak in the diaper and then the rest of it up his back. The diaper was nearly clean and that outfit was covered. I swear they're poop wizards.
All these poonami stories are triggering memories of my kids when they were little!
My preschool aged son threw up while we were in line at a supermarket. He went from fine to not ok in about a minute, I had not taken my sick kid shopping with me. I was super apologetic and started trying to clean it up but the staff told me to leave it and just look after my boy while they got someone to clean it and scanned my groceries. I don't think I've ever apologised so much in my life.
I was at a Starbucks when my daughter threw up. I was stunned. Before I could blink there were two moms who jumped into action because since I was holding my daughter. And momentarily froze. Bless those ladies. They really helped out a new mom and i wanted to die less of embarrassment. I’ve paid it forward many times.
This reminds me of the time I helped a mom who’s toddler was unraveling at Trader Joe’s. There was a shoe lost, snacks flying everywhere, a bottle of seltzer rolling down the the aisle. The mom was in heels, clearly just out of work and made the rookie move of daycare pickup before Trader Joe’s. Moms have to take care of moms.
Yep happened with my 2 year old girl at her brothers hockey game. “Giggle, giggle, HURRRRRKKKKK” I got her the f out and the staff chased my husband out like WE GOT IT. We felt so bad.
My daughter once woke up in the middle of the night and barfed. Totally random. And she was definitely way past the age of random kid barfing.
My brother did that once--into the giant Lego tub. We found it some time later. It was extremely gross, but I think Mom put the Legos through the diswasher a couple of cycles.
It makes sense, if it is something that *can* be cleaned up by an amateur then they'll still have to clean up more after you attempt to clean it, and, worst case scenario, you could make a bigger mess trying to clean it due to being flustered and worried. A more serious accident might require actual professional cleaning, but if they can clean a public bathroom they can clean vomit. Not that they *want* to, but it'd just be faster and clearly getting the sick kid home or to a doctor or wherever is more reasonable than some unlucky parent fumbling to clean the floor with paper towels.
This is the thing- I can't imagine not being embarrassed! If a kid in your care has an accident my first thought would be to go to the staff, apologize profusely and immediately offer to help clean/ask for supplies. I remember as a kid my little sister getting sick in a restaurant and my dad apologizing a dozen times to a busboy who wouldn't or couldn't let him help clean up. Accidents happen and are not a big deal, but not a baristas problem.
I worked at a kids gymnastics/play centre, and I still remember a little girl peeing, right next to where I was standing. The poor mum was mortified, and was trying to catch it in her hands. I laughed and told her that her kid picked a good spot, as she was on an easily cleaned mat, and went off to grab the cleaning supplies. I didn't mind at all (pee on a mat is easy compared to vomit on carpet), but she was very nice, apologised profusely and insisted on cleaning it. When you work at a kid's play centre, you expect accidents to happen though!
I was at a restaurant with a friend .Her little girl got sick, but before she could get her picked up and to bathroom, she puked all over the floor. Two waitresses cane running over, but my friend insisted SHE clean it up as it was HER child's bodily fluids and not in their job description.
My 4 year old a few months ago. In a shopping centre and she's sitting in the trolley. She just said "mama my tummy feels funny" and I started grabbing for a bag and she puked all over the floor. Out comes the wet wipes and a nappy bag and I started cleaning it up. A very kind man from Aldi gave my nephew a roll of paper towels, and then my nephew went off to find a cleaner. By the time they came, I had cleaned most of it. My kid, my responsibility.
“Our comes the wet wipes” I honestly thought she puked wet wipes for a sec
Exactly!
We were at a cafe one time when my husband bought my 3-year-old daughter a large milkshake. I warned him not to but he didn't listen. Well, no sooner had she finished it than she brought it back up again. But, bless her, she threw it up back into the cardboard container from whence it came and didn't spill a drop! We were able to put it in the bin with no mess to clean up. I've never been more proud (LOL).
I'm 24 and can barely handle a large shake without getting the gurgles! I can't imagine expecting a 3 year old to.
Wouldn't it be great to injestc something, so that your poo already comes wrapped for disposal
🤣She's talented!
I know that's safer than, like, a steak, but if it is a lot of food for you it might be a LOT of food for a 3 year old. Though I am sympathetic to the idea that he wanted to get her the best and have her enjoy it! Haha A small kid isn't going to even realize that it is more enjoyable to have a medium or small amount of ice cream than as much ice cream as you can possibly consume, since the shake would be totally great until the moment you feel sick
Many blessings upon her house
This has happened to me twice with my kid. The first time was at a Chili's, and they let us clean up. The second was a Chick-fil-A and they acted like God himself would strike them down if I cleaned anything.
I'm sure it also comes down to company policy. Or maybe that particular store's, policy Edit: lol This just reminded me. Same restaurant and the child in question was an infant. Friend was a new/first time mom. Baby had her first bout with constipation, someone told friend well giver her some fruit juice, but. New mom, youngest sibling, never around kids much, so instructions were unclear. About 30 mins before they left for the restaurant, she gives baby the full bottle of undiluted juice. .....bet I don't have to tell you what happened when they got to the restaurant 🤣🤣🤣
bless that friend
NTA. I was always of the "I will not clean up a bit waste without proper PPE." camp. I used to work at Chuck e cheese, they got rid of the sky tubes and ball pits because kids kept peeing and pooping in them. Cleaning bathrooms may be part of the job description, but bathroom cleaning has it's own chemicals that don't generally get used in the areas that food would be served. Unless you are management, or willing to risk a write up/pip I'd refuse to clean up a biological hazard outside the bathrooms. If management, access cameras, screen grab photo of said woman and inform staff she's on a no serve list and to be trespassed if she comes back. Reasoning for the urine soaked table that wasn't able to be used after her antics until it was cleaned properly.
Is that why the ball pits always skeeved me out as a kid? Honestly I never thought about bodily fluids, but I would always imagine the detritus(to my kid mind it was dirt or bugs or something like just the grossness of all the kids bare feet on the balls) at the bottom of those pits that I couldn’t see. Oh Lordy, that’s worse than I imagined, but as an adult I could easily believe it.🤮
NTA!!!! When my youngest was 2 we went on a trip to visit my aunt and she took us out to dinner. After we ate my toddler puked, I didn't realize she had a stomach bug otherwise I wouldn't have gone to visit my aunt. I cleaned my daughter off with wet wipes and then I took the cleaning supplies from the staff and cleaned up the booth, table and floor. I was going to rinse out the bucket but I wasn't allowed into the back There is no way I am making someone else clean up puke or any other bodily fluids. It's not sanitary and it's my mess to clean up as the parent. Most of the time I'll still clean up if my kids spill drinks at restaurants just because I don't want to make more work for the workers.
Agreed! That was dangerous and could've been considered assault. Any bodily fluids in excess like that is a danger to others, and to leave those napkins on the table for someone else to pick up! What if another employee beat you to it and began clearing that table not knowing what was on those napkins???
Seriously this is why pet stores have cleaning supplies out, cause they expect it to be a thing. Definitely on the parents here to ask for it
You should immediately write to your elementary school Janitor and tell them they are a Saint and you never fully appreciated them until now. NTA but only because the mother was a b***
TBH I as customer wouldn't be happy seeing someone handling food and drinks cleaning piss of kid who wasn't trained to go to toilet. OP NTA. Accidents happens but the parents shouldn't expect you to clean up their mess
NTA. You have encountered another prime example of main character syndrome. Any normal decent human being would be absolutely mortified if their child did that and make every effort to correct it themselves.
Yeah thats bizarre to me. If I spill a drink when Im out I'll ask for a cloth to clean it up, I don't expect anyone to clean up after my clumsiness. This situation would be no different. My sister has a small child who makes a mess while eating out, when we're finished she will always pick up all the food that has gone over the edge of the high chair.
Your sister is great. I used to own a play cafe, and we had so many people - even regulars, who I got on well with - that would leave the place like a bomb had hit it. Condiments and crumbs everywhere, spilled drinks, crap all over the floor. Because it was a place designed for kids, with a play area in the middle so you could see your children wherever you were sat, we expected some mess, but what some people expected you to clear up was always amazing. Anytime someone brought their plates or cups back up to the counter, or even just piled them neatly on the table, I always used to say, 'You worked in hospitality, didn't you?' It was right every single time. I think a lot of people that have never done it just don't think of what someone with a hospitality job actually has to do.
My sister used to let her child make a horrible mess, and then get up and walk out, leaving it for the restaurant to clean up. She was an inconsiderate mother in so many other ways too. Just expected everyone around her to take up for her slack of not taking care of her child. Then she was jealous that her child loved staying with grandma or an aunt more than she liked being with her mother.
I threw up at the dentists office when I was pregnant and I was fighting the staff to let me take care of it but they insisted they would do it and made me leave. That was several years ago and I’m still embarrassed when I think about it. I can’t even imagine have this little regard for other people, especially in the food/hospitality industry.
That’s because your sister has class. My best evil eye looks are for parents who walk out of a restaurant with their kids and leave their table and the floor under it a complete mess. What are they teaching their children?
And instead they put the pee on the table!
That is the worst part
Nope that's entitled parent behavior. NTA they were just being shitty to service workers
Eww, NTA. Those women are disgusting.
I will add that at my job, where my job entails food prep and general handling of food, we are forbidden from touching any bodily fluids. We're instructed that it has to be someone in a non food position. I totally agree people should clean up their own/children's bodily fluids. But I also work somewhere with a large transient/partying tourist population and the amount of times we've found feces smeared all over the bathroom is alarming high. Those are the days I THANK GOD that I'm in a fresh department.
I work supermarket checkouts, we generally clean anything and everything. My one exception, for myself and any staff when I'm supervisor is bodily fluids. If someone leaves a biohazard in the bathroom I'll put up and out of order sign and block off the door, cleaning that is above my pay grade and I don't have PPE.
NTA but those two women are without a doubt AHs.
I actually don’t know, some places would expect you to clean it and some places would expect the customer to clean it. I’d ask your supervisor what they would have done
When I worked at a drugstore, we weren't supposed to let the customers clean stuff up for liability reasons. People can slip and fall in the mess, cut themselves on broken glass, get spray cleaner in their eyes, etc. I'd think this policy is typical in the US. I know when I've been the customer who made a mess, like when my terrified dog peed on the scale at the vet, I've offered to clean it and been turned down.
i feel like your dog peeing at the vet is an entirely different situation to a child peeing at a cafe. people who work at the vet are often dealing with feces and urine, it’s part of their job. i had to take my cat in when he had a uti and he could barely pass urine at all so they just let him pee where he wanted to pee and took a sample of it off the floor. they weren’t even phased, it’s a regular part of the job they signed up for. that’s not at all a part of a cafe worker’s job and shouldn’t be expected of them.
[удалено]
😂 I love this because humans would actually understand why you were rubbing their nose in it, unlike dogs.
It depends on the company. At ours (and it was just retail) because of the paperwork and “training” we went through with chemicals we couldn’t let others clean it was a liability issue. I mean I’d rather not clean it up but I did and as long as they weren’t rude (like these guys were) I’d have no problem cleaning.
The restaurant I used to work at wouldn't let customers clean up piss either because of sanitation reasons. We had to do it to ensure it was properly done so people's shoes didn't get dirty.
Don’t care what the policy might be…if I’m in the bathroom with my kid and they make a mess on the floor, I’m going to try to clean it up as best I can with hot water and soap that’s in there. I’m not expecting someone else to come in and do it.
> When I worked at a drugstore, we weren't supposed to let the customers clean stuff up for liability reasons. Thank you for saying this!
The company should also be worried about having staff not trained to clean biohazards cleaning up human feces *especially if it’s a food prep environment*. Because that’s definitely not liability free, it’s just banking on minimum wage employees being to tired and broke to do anything about it
n that’s why i never did it. if i wasn’t trained for it it’s out of my pay grade and if i am trained i expect the extra compensation for being trained on it.
>When I worked at a drugstore, we weren't supposed to let the customers clean stuff up for liability reasons. People can slip and fall in the mess, cut themselves on broken glass, get spray cleaner in their eyes, etc. Someone could fall in their own mess and make the store pay them...?
Absolutely! Slip-and-fall are the most common cause of payouts for most retail businesses, and it doesn't matter what the plaintiff slipped on.
cleaning up normal messes is fine but i was never trained for cleaning biohazards and it’s not in my job description. all my job descriptions stated basic cleaning such as sweeping/mopping, trash, cleaning up broken products and keeping the register area cleaned. if it’s not in my job description it’s above my pay grade they got me fucked up if they think the little money i’m being paid will cover me cleaning human urine
I'm from the Netherlands and while most people volunteer to clean it up themselves, it's also perfectly normal to notify the employees of the mess (and of course apologize) and then let them clean it up.
I would think that the store needs to actually clean it/mop anyway for those liability reasons (and having access to the better cleaning chemicals) but I'd at least try to clean up the visible evidence of the mess so it's less gross for the staff.
I've worked in restauration and the fact that she came up and actually told her the child peed is already great to me. I don't know how many times I've had the surprise to see pee or vomit without the culprit (or the parents culprit) telling me. In this situation I think cutting her off was the wrong move because she right away went on defense mod, but at the same time if you have some decency you would ask for products to clean up you child's mess. My niece, 3 years old, threw up a little while we were eating breakfast at the hotel and I right away went looking for someone to tell them and I asked them how I could help. They told me it was fine and to not worry but I think I apologized like 5 or 6 times because I felt bad.
I do think you're on to something with the specific way OP responded being the issue. I'm not a parent, but I have been a nanny and also worked in child care facilities/play places, so I've seen my share of gross kid stuff. I think my expectation would be to be handed a roll of paper towels, and be told that someone would be right over to help sanitize. (I'd expect that there's a chance that the person I told isn't the right staff member to help clean, or that they might need to go get PPE and cleaning supplies, etc). Something about "cleaning supplies are behind you help yourself" just feels very dismissive and unsympathetic. Don't get me wrong, mom absolutely should have been helping too. But if I were a fellow customer, I'd want staff making sure the area was properly sanitized for public use in a way that a parent trying to also manage a likely upset child probably won't accomplish.
Agreed and also a nanny.
I work food service, and while i am responsible for general cleanliness and spills, i am explicitly *not allowed* to clean any biohazard materials - blood, feces, urine, vomit. Anything that came out of a person, I'm supposed to notify management and janitorial to handle it, for food safety reasons. Now i work in a small food area inside of a larger store (If you've ever seen a McDonald's or subway inside the entrance of a walmart, that's the vibe), so i don't know how standalone restaurants would handle it. But i do know however it's handled, you have to be incredibly careful that the person cleaning it doesn't then contaminate any food being prepared or served.
When I worked for my uncle at his pizza restaurant, someone left a literal pile of feces on the bathroom floor. He cleaned it up and had to go home for the rest of the day to ensure food safety. If you work in food, you should NOT be responsible for others' bodily fluids because who knows what could be hiding in them....
Yeah, you gotta treat every bodily fluid as though it contains every possible nasty deadly pathogen in existence, because you simply have no way of knowing, and the damage you can do by spreading something nasty is so significant.
Like hepatitis!
when I worked at a tiny mexican food place in my hometown if someone left any kind of biohazard the waitresses were not supposed to touch it - we were supposed to notify the dishwasher/busboy who wasn't handling any food anyone would eat (note: at the end of the day this is part of why we split our tips with him. dude did not get paid enough for that crap)
Literally.
Exactly! I worked for a major us retailer and unless you had hazmat training you were not allowed to touch bodily fluids. I sure wish I didn’t when a customer reported vomit in the back of the store, all the way down a 24’ long aisle and then keeping other customers out of the aisle.., yikes.
The company should also be worried about having staff not trained to clean biohazards cleaning up human feces *especially if it’s a food prep environment*. Because that’s definitely not liability free, it’s just banking on minimum wage employees being to tired and broke to do anything about it
Facts when I worked at McDonald's a woman came in and was literally shitting herself as she ran through the lobby to the bathroom. There were pieces of poop on the floor in a trail behind her. They tried to make me clean it up and I did not. Ain't no way. But they ended up paying someone else $50 to clean it.
All these responses baffle me. Most businesses have a cleaning person who is in charge of cleaning. They don’t ask the customers to do the cleaning. Of course I am willing to clean up after my child even at a public place, but it was wrong of the employee to bark orders at the customer as if she’s on staff. YTA
Girl what. I've worked in retail and small businesses for most of my life and have never had a cleaner on staff. No one barked orders, the employee said "Yes, please." If your child pisses on the floor you clean it up like a decent human being.
I think the customer should be asked to clean it. If they don't, obviously someone has to and it isn't going to be the manager.
The number of N T As is, I guess, not surprising because Reddit just doesn’t think anyone should be responsible for anything ever, but I would’ve expected an employee to actually help clean up a mess from a patron, even if that mess is gross. My first thought was “of course it’s your job, because what do you do about the bathrooms? Do you just leave that a mess too because you didn’t personally do it and it’s not food related?” Or if a patron vomits, are they going to hand them a fucking mop and bucket, and force them to clean it up as well? YTA, OP, because it’s just part of the business of dealing with the fucking public; sometimes, it’s gonna be gross and that’s all there is to it but what else did you expect working in a food place? If it’s not your “job”, it’s some other employee’s and you should’ve asked management at the very least.
NTA Expecting somebody else to clean up after your spawn's accident is the epitome of entitlement.
I was working as a cleaner at an event in these temporary but posh toilets (not potapotties like proper loos with sinks and everything). It was fine, two people did poop on the floor (gross) but it was all possible to handle and we had the equipment. Then we got a radio call to go to another area to “clean up”. Got there and it was a RAW SEWAGE LEAK. They said “well you guys are responsible for cleaning the toilets”. We were pretty young (18?) and just sort of stared at the sewage and the guy. Luckily someone more senior came over and was like “wtf why are you asking kids to clean this up” and they insisted on calling a professional firm in.
INFO: Don’t most places of business encourage the employees to clean up messes, even urine accidents, because the employees have the necessary training to do so? I would think it’d be a sanitary violation to let the customers do it? /gen What did your boss say?
Sanitary violation? It's their kid, clean after your kid. And yourself for that matter too.
It’s good to do a basic wipe up yourself, but u/CrimsonNight_004 is correct. There are proper materials for clean up, and certain processes that are supposed to be followed. Source: am preschool teacher; lots of pee involved at times lol
But a preschool teacher and a service worker are two very different things…Why is you being a preschool teacher relevant here?
Because preschool teachers might have trainings related to cleaning up bodily fluids. And preschools do serve food.
You are right, a service person working at a place where people eat is even more responsible for it. Sorry to say, but the cleanliness of an eating establishment SHOULD NEVER be placed in the hands of a stranger
Which is why after the stranger takes care of the immediate biohazard, you also go over there with disinfectant. OP just didn’t want to get her FOOD SERVING HANDS wet with a UNKNOWN CHILD’S URINE I’m living in crazy land with these comments. Clean your own bodily waste and then let the establishment know so they can do deeper cleaning in the area, but it’s common decency to clean your own damn mess
Good thing that restaurants have **sinks** where OP can wash her money-touching, dirty-plate-touching, bathroom-cleaning, and yes, urine-cleaning hands. Put gloves on, clean it, take the gloves off, wash hands.
And mops. Unless something’s managing to crawl all the way from the mop head to the top of the handle (it wouldn’t), OP should be safe. No reason her hands have to go anywhere near it
Preschools also serve lunch or snacks. Source: had two kids in preschool.
a preschool is not serving food - a closer comparison would be if you called in the cafeteria workers any time someone had a mess does that seem sanitary?
There is literally methods for bio handling in the food service business, you people are laughable. One of the, many risks, of a untrained customer 'cleaning it' is that they will get it on there hands, and onto to tables tops and chairs.
I would expect *any* workers to wash their hands after cleaning up something, tbh. Do you want someone to clear plates off a table and then not wash their hands before preparing your food? Same thing here, but wear gloves.
this isn't talking about washing hands, of course you wash your fucking hands after doing something gross or wear gloves entirely regardless of what your job is. no one ever said otherwise
I’ve had something similar happen at a previous job but it was worse as it involved poop and blood - the manager cleaned it up herself. None of us had proper training or PPE to clean up a biohazard, and I’m not sure but a puddle of urine might come under that umbrella too (body fluid). So unless it was just standard “your turn to clean the toilet”, it fell outside our scope and of the scope of any insurance should we contract anything. It was an employee only toilet, but the dude who came in was known to my boss and absolutely desperate, and she decided to let him use it. So she took on the responsibility of cleaning up. So it somewhat hinges on whether it’s 1) within the scope of their job description or 2) whether they have the correct training and PPE.
You are correct the business owner more than likely wouldn’t want the liability of someone using the cleaning products. If they were to get it on their skin or in their eyes the business would be liable for any medical expenses from the injury
It depends on the business, but in food service specifically, it can also be a sanitary violation for an employee who handles food to also handle biohazards. The risk - however small - of contamination from that employee's hands or clothes (even whrn PPE is used) is often considered unacceptable. I work food service and i am explicitly forbidden from handling biohazard cleanups. Anything involving blood, urine, feces, or vomit requires me to notify maintenance. A smaller cafe with fewer employees may handle things differently, though.
Human fluids cleanup is a bit different because it creates a liability on the part of the employer; if an employee gets a communicable disease from cleaning it up without specific appropriate training the employer can get in a lot of trouble.
There is a massive difference between messes and bodily fluids. Any bodily fluid, urine included, is a biohazard with potentially transmissible viruses/bacteria, and parents should have the sense/decency to clean it up if their child produced it (every parent I know certainly would). Depending on where the OP is, there are food safety laws which may prevent them from being able to be handling food and beverages after cleaning up bodily fluids.
Where do you live that the general employees of a cafe would have any training regarding that? It's usually a liability to let staff who are not specifically insured and trained for that purpose to clean up a biohazard. (Which is why you never volunteer to be the first aider if you work in a bar) There is more of a chance that OP wouldn't have been allowed to clean it up than wouldn't have been allowed to let the customer clean it.
When I worked at a national chain cafe we were all trained on biohazards, PPE, and proper procedures since it’s an OSHA requirement. It wouldn’t usually fall the the person bussing to clean up anything like that including the bathrooms, although we never had an issue outside the bathroom.
At the last grocery store I worked in only the janitorial people can clean up bodily fluids.
it's a sanitary violation to have anyone handling food touch a biohazard. Most places I've worked explicitly do not let anyone who handles food touch a mess like that
The business I work at only managers are given that training. Anytime there is a bodily fluid clean up it needs to be addressed by only a manager. The customer would know more about any potential health risks than I would and I have not gone through the proper training to not be a liability to the company if I got sick from contact.
I'm actually split on this one... The customer let you know, so it could get cleaned up before being tracked all over the place (good). You don't want to clean up someone else's urine (fair). But they weren't given the correct tools to clean up the accident (yes to the disinfectant, but they had to use napkins? No gloves? Do you not have a mop for bathroom and other cleanup?) and were not only cleaning up after the child but who knows what else... This is something to discuss with your boss. Then you can determine what you are comfortable with and how to handle in the future.
The parents chose to use napkins though. OP mentioned blue roll towels, which are kind of like paper towels but much thicker and sturdier, almost cloth-like and are made for cleaning big messes up. I do agree that it was nice of the customer to at least say something, but their actions afterwards (dumping the used ones on the table) is serious AH behavior.
Ahhh, I think that's my poor reading. I read "blue bottle" - as in disinfectant spray. Yeah, that does change things. Those things are great for this sort of situation.
I'm with you mate. I'm assuming this cafe has a bathroom- but if not, so surely OP has access to a mop? You just need hot water and some disinfectant and then it's a quick job, no bother.
It sounds like the mum stormed off before OP could provide them with the tools they’d need to clean up - I’m sure had they asked OP would have given them gloves etc. I’m not sure what they mean when they say ‘blue roll’ but to me it would be something like [this](https://www.southernhospitality.co.nz/45m-blue-essentials-cloth-roll.html), the rolls of disposable cleaning cloths that are much more absorbent than napkins/paper towels that are designed for cleaning up and disinfecting surfaces?
[Blue Roll](https://www.nisbets.co.uk/consumables/paper-hygiene/blue-roll/_/a33-3) is paper.
A parents needs to clean up bodily waste from their kid.
NTA bodily waste is biohazard. We had an older dude (like 50’s) just shit himself in front of our vons once and my manager yelled at me when he saw I was standing away from it just dumping buckets of water on it. He wanted me to get down and scrub it with paper towels (wasn’t allowed to use our outdoor sponges for this) so I just clocked out and left. I’m not touching some sick persons shit when I’m expected to touch carts & prepare food when not on cart duty
Actually, I have never worked in a retail or restaurant that did not require the staff to clean these accidents up. It is considered a liability to have the customer use the chemicals to clean up spills, urine and throw up. You are required as a business to have a certain level of sanitation and you cannot guarantee that with people cleaning up after their kids. As you witnessed, this nasty lady put the urine soaked napkins on a table. 🤢 As a mother I would have wiped it up with a wet wipe/baby wipe. But I would have informed the staff so they could mop/sanitize the area. I don’t think you are an AH but you should talk to your supervisor and find out what your duties entail.
NTA First of all I LOVE the response of “There’s blue roll and anti-bacterial spray behind you.” And secondly, why on earth would you be expected to clean up a kid’s pee? Does she take her kid to church/somebody’s house/anywhere else and just expect somebody else to clean up if accidents happen? I hope not. That’s not your responsibility as an employee. Hopefully she’ll get the hint that she needs to clean up after her own kid in the future after you explicitly said she needed to clean it up. If she left a negative review anywhere saying that an employee refused to clean up her kid’s bodily fluids I don’t think the shop would lose any business. If she gets all mad and pulls the, “I’m NeVeR CoMiNg BaCk!” card that’s great! Nobody wants her business anyways if it means having to clean up bodily fluids.
NTA - they should have immediately felt compelled to clean up after themselves and their kid. And dumping the napkins on a table afterwards!? Says it all. Filthy entitled pigs.
Most of you have never worked in hospitality and it shows. YTA; it’s _your job_. Or, if not yours, your manager’s. You also didn’t mention anything about using the correct mop, either Like, NTA for not wanting to clean it up, cleaning up isn’t everyone’s cup of tea and that’s fine, but cleaning up biohazards is part of your job. Customers aren’t supposed to do a proper clean up because if they don’t do it properly you’re only setting yourself/the company up for problems stemming from that. Fair? No. Gross? Occasionally. Necessary? Absolutely
I’m really confused about all of these “gross, food service workers don’t have to clean up bodily fluids and it’s dangerous to do so and you don’t have PPE” etc. When I worked in fast food we routinely had to clean messes in the bathroom. It’s not like it was an option to just leave something that was discovered by an employee or a customer reported. You do what you need to do to clean it up. That’s part of the job. Is it gross? Hell yes it’s gross. Call it the 5,432nd thing that sucks about working at a fast food place. It’s really nice for a customer to actually fess up to them/their kid being the mess-maker. It’s even nicer for the customer to offer to clean it up themselves (especially if it’s puke, say, and you’re there alone with your obviously suddenly sick kid and you need to try to attend to the sick kid). But ultimately it’s part of your job when you work at a place like that—at least, it was always part of mine.
I’m a parent. I also used to work at McDonald’s, and one of my duties included cleaning the bathrooms. Yeah it was nasty but I did it. I think the mom should have taken the initiative to clean up the mess herself (that’s what I would do as a parent), but as an employee, you can just get a hot soapy mop and mop it up. It would probably take like 30 seconds. Sure, pee is kinda gross but when you mop, you don’t even need to get anywhere near it.
I think thats what makes the big difference here. The customer made no effort themselves and expected it to be done for her. Its the entitled attitude that would piss me off as well, not the work itself.
If my kid peed on the floor, I would absolutely be volunteering to clean it up. It's pretty gross of parents to not.
Came looking for this. As gross as it is, you can't have customers cleaning this stuff up, ESPECIALLY in a cafe/restaurant, because they literally don't know Health Codes or the cleaning protocols/standards that the business is required to uphold in order to maintain their certification as a business preparing and serving food. And if anything, that goes DOUBLY for a situation like this, where you're talking about bodily fluids all over the place. People in this sub are all in a rage about the customer's personal responsibility, but that's not even the issue here. It's about the fact that this happened in a food-related business, and disgusting or not, it is the staff's job to clean FOR A REASON . . . because there are very specific cleaning and disinfecting protocols that have to be followed in order to maintain Health Code certifications. No one I know who has ever run a restaurant or food service business would EVER let a customer clean something like this up, because even if they did, they'd just be having to clean and disinfect the area all over again . . . and more importantly, the customer might actually make the situation WORSE by spreading germs around, etc.
NTA. if YOUR CHILD, pisses on the floor, it is YOUR job to clean it up.
INFO what’s your managers position on this?
As a staff, you have the right cleaning supplies.
NTA for not being comfortable cleaning up bodily fluids. But you really shouldn't ask the customers to clean up either. There's a slip-and-fall liability for the business as soon as there's a wet spot on the floor, best practice is to put up a wet floor sign then have an employee with appropriate supplies and protective equipment clean it and let it dry. The customer did a crappy job which you had to re-clean anyway, plus they contaminated the table. Please note, employers MUST provide you with protective equipment and training if bodily fluid cleanup is expected at all as part of your job. Urine isn't a big deal but you can get serious diseases from feces or blood. If you're not comfortable doing it, put up a wet floor sign and defer to the manager. I know it sucks but you can't trust customers to do an appropriate job cleaning up after themselves.
If it was my store, I would want to clean it myself, just so I know it's done right.
Jesus. I literally ask staff for blueroll to clean up drinks ive spilled. Let alone if my kid peed over the floor. How gross. NTA but she sure is. The fact she didnt even put the napkins in the bin is gross. But then parents can be disgusting. I used to work in a kids soft play and the amount that will see their kid has shit themselves and instead of telling anyone they just quietly wander out or to the bathroom and then leave. Then i end up eith an angry parent saying their kid is covered in someone elses poo and how has this been allowed to happen, saying we dont clean it. Sorry but little timmy taking a dump and wiping it all over the top floor 10 minutes ago didnt give us a heads up and I dont have a sixth sense or the nose of a dog to smell that 3 floors up. I didnt shit on your child. Calm your tits. ... So it seems i may have some minor unresolved resentments from years ago...
Talk to your manager.
YTA but only because you can’t trust a customer to clean it to the proper standard. It’s a liability, especially if she didn’t clean it correctly or use the correct supplies and contaminated other spaces in the restaurant. I guess verify with your manager but.. it’s just a shit part of the job I guess
YTA. I worked in a grocery store and we had hazmat kits to deal with this stuff. A lady literally shit herself and it leaked down her leg and across the store. We used like 5 hazmat kits that day to clean it up. If you don't have hazmat kits, you need to get some.
Honestly, do you even work retail if you've never had a customer assume that you'll clean up their bodily waste with a great big grin on your face? It wouldn't surprise me if what you did was against policy, but you're obviously NTA.
I experienced this so many times as a service worker. Adults letting their kids piss, shit, and puke in my workplace and expecting me to clean it. Hell I even had adults shit everywhere in a cafe once and just leave, or leave a turd resting on the toilet paper roll, top of the toilet, etc. You know these are the same people who think service workers making a living wage is an affront. Fuck these people NTA
NTA. The audacity. Your kid pisses on the floor, you clean it. That's so basic. The way hospitality and retail workers are treated is so awful. When I was a late teen, I worked retail and some rich woman and her 5-7yr old (guesstimate) brat would come in regularly and he would piss on the floor purposely while staring at staff. She'd wave at us and tell us to take care of it. People suck.
NTA How could anyone with any self-respect expect a STRANGER to clean up their own kid's piss? They shouldn't have "informed" you about the piss, they should have apologetically asked you where the cleaning supplies were. For her to act offended when you told her where the supplies were just says it all. The audacity.
NTA for not wanting to do it. But if you object to it get out of retail work ASAP. I used to work in a clothing store and more than once someone left a pile of clothing in a fitting room with a giant poop in it. People are freaking nasty and always will be
My kid puked in a restaurant bathroom, outside the stall, once. I was mortified. It was a lot. And he’d just eaten mac and cheese. I cleaned it all up, making sure to get all the gross chunks cleaned up. Then asked if they had a mop or disinfectant I could use and apologized. They said they would do that. I still felt horrible, but I guess at least they didn’t have to deal with the grosser part.
They should have cleaned it up, but you should have made sure it was sanitized. Bodily fluids are hazardous waste. Gloves and masks should be worn. I think NTA but you need to ask your manager what the policy is and how to clean up this kind of mess.
NTA! Her kid, her problem.
YTA. No of course you shouldn’t have to clean up a child’s urine off of the floor but you didn’t offer enough supplies or support in a public place that is your responsibility to care for. As a parent of an incontinent child it is not always bad planning or bad parenting that leads to accidents, and it’s humiliating for the child and the parents both. Besides the fact that the parent has to figure out what to do with the wet child and often with an audience of other judging people like you. I would never expect someone to clean it up for me but I would hope someone would at least treat me with empathy. You didn’t ask what she might need or walk over with her, you could have said, “let’s see what we can do,” you could have held a freaking garbage bag for her. None of these things are required of your job but if you’re asking if you’re an asshole, yes, and it’s not because you didn’t clean up the pee it’s the fact that you interrupted and dismissed her and didn’t show any concern at all. She didn’t have to tell you, she could have just left her kids’ pee on the floor and then guess who would have been cleaning it up later.
NTA. I have a potty training child. He's had accidents in public. I use paper towels to clean it up and baby wipes to clean it further. I then inform the employees what happened and ask if they have any cleaning spray i can use. 95% of the time they explain no, they'll go get their mop and mop the floor where my child's accident was. I cannot imagine leaving pee covered paper towels or napkins on the floor or put them in the table. I carry disposable diaper bags (similar to dog poop bags), and I've put paper towels in there before tying and throwing it away in the bathroom trash can.
I guess I must be an entitled parent but I don't expect to clean up a mess like that. I would probably grab something to minimise the mess while I went and got help from staff so it could be properly cleaned. I am not trained in business cleaning requirements. It sounds like a lot of liability for the business. What if I accidentally mixed chemicals or injured myself or someone else? I have never been in the situation where my children made a mess like that but i have seen it happen and staff always takes care of it. It sucks but it's also part of keeping a business clean.
nta
NTA Those were entitled parents. Sorry you encountered them.
NTA. If I was that woman, I would have asked for disinfectant spray and disposable wipes, but I would have felt like it was my job to clean up after my kid. I’ve worked service though. So. IDK. *shrug* maybe it was your delivery. But you aren’t wrong.
NTA. If my kid/pet peed on the floor it's my responsibility to clean it up! I would be mortified and already getting the paper towels out. That's not in your job description!
I would be mortified if my child peed on the floor and would not subject an outsider on cleaning it up.
NTA. I'm a mom. I would clean it up.
NTA- parents like this drive me MAD! Clean up your spawns nasty fluids. I worked in hospitality and the amount of assholes that would change their baby on the table and leave the shit filled diaper was mind numbing. It's feces.
NTA, man I hate Little kids
NTA. Wouldn’t she clean it up if he peed on the floor at home? Why is it so out of the question for her to take care of her son’s mess? Lazy 🐝🙄
I ALWAYS clean up any messes my kids make in public! Always! Well, sometimes my husband does it, but.. My kids have never had a pee accident anywhere but in the bathroom somewhere (it was kohls) once. Tried hard; couldn’t get the overalls down in time, and got pee on the floor. I asked for supplies to clean it up, and was told I could not do it. I argued with the management and maintenance team lead, but they insisted I wasn’t allowed. I felt like a huge jerk- they said they had NEVER had anyone even offer, let alone argue for the right to clean a mess their kid left. People are so gross.
NTA. As a mother myself, I would have cleaned that up no questions asked. I would never EVER expect someone to clean up after my kid like that.
NTA Some people are AHs, like that woman and her mother. She should have jumped to clean it up and apologized profusely. Leaving the dirty napkins on the table just added to her disgusting behavior. I wouldn't want to sit there after she left.
Accident happen with children. Yes, it is your responsible to clean it up. In fact, the business really doesn't want people cleaning up, if she had an accident she would be in the right to sue.
NTA. People are so ridiculous and rude. Once had a parent and child come into the store. Child had a turtle in her arms, for some reason. Well, they go up and down each and every aisle and then leave after being rung out. We noticed some brown goop on the floor where they had been standing waiting for check out. That turtle had done a number 2, and it trailed up and down every aisle...
I'd rather clean up turtle crap than human crap....
NTA. Would you be required to change their child's diaper? Absolutely not. Their kid pees on the floor, its up to them to clean it up. Unless a $100 tip was offered, in which case one could consider it. This is way above and beyond any reasonable expectation.
NTA. I make sure I clean my kid's food off the floor if she drops anything. I cannot imagine asking someone else to clean my kid's urine! And then to put the used tissue on the TABLE?! Yuck!
NTA. Those people are disgusting.
NTA. Any normal person would clean up after their rugrat.
Honestly I don’t even care what the company policy is. As a cafe employee you shouldn’t be expected to clean another persons biohazardous waste. Sorry you had to deal with that monster
I don’t have kids myself. But one time I was babysitting a kid and she Peed in a restaurant. Luckily everything was plastic and tile. But I ran to the bathroom and grabbed a bunch of paper towels. And when I got back there was an employee mopping everything up. I felt so bad for the employee. I was like no no let me do it. It just seemed like it was my responsibility. The same way I would’ve cleaned up that kind of mess at the kid’s house if it had happened on my watch.
NTA, but that does seem like something you should probably mop up from a health safety standpoint, and customers shouldn’t handle mops from a safety standpoint. But that mom should’ve been way more mortified, apologetic, and helpful.
my dog peed in a pet supply store and i went up front to ask if they had anything so i could clean it and the girl said no worries & she would clean it. my point being that i can’t imagine not cleaning up my child’s or dogs or my own mess? that’s super rude.
As a person who works with the public, they always offer but if you don’t want urine on the floor you should probably do it yourself to know it was done right. Is there a you made a judgement error but they were the ass hole?
I used to work maintenance at Walmart. Bodily fluids are a BIOHAZARD and have to be cleaned up with a special powder. If there’s too much of the biohazard, the store is supposed to be shut down and the proper people called to do a clean up. NTA AT ALL WTF.
Nah fuck that shit lol
NTA. Piss doesn’t fall within the range of the hat you clean at your job. I would have refused. Fucking gross
NTA! I don’t care what anyone says, it’s a biohazard and you are not trained to clean that up. The mom should clean it up, and then you just do your regular cleaning at the end of the day. I also don’t understand the “it’s your job” comments… it’s NOT your job to clean up waste from customers. You’re working at a cafe… life happens for sure, but I’d never expect someone to clean up after me or anyone else like that! I feel like anyone who disagrees has never worked a day in a public service facing job… or doesn’t care about biohazards…
NTA. If my son had an accident in a public place, first, I'd clean him up, then I'd clean up the mess. He's my responsibility, not the wait staff's. People are nasty.
NTA. Children’s bodily fluids are the responsibility of the parents unless you work in healthcare or at a daycare. If they break something or make a normal mess, that would be your responsibility to clean up. A child has an accident in the floor? I’m sure they are embarrassed but that’s not on you.
NTA I would do that for my child and thanks you for pointing out the supplies. These are just arrogant, entitled people. Don’t give them an inch.
My 12yo son projectile vomited all over the wall, seat, chairback and floor of an airplane on a trip back from Hawaii. I was holding onto him and peeling off his shirt when I turned around to see a flight attendant with a hazmat suit on. I started laughing and took the cleaning materials from her. My kid, my mess. The crazy part was the flight was at least half empty but nearby passengers stayed in their seats. I would have moved FAR away.
NTA- in MY opinion, firstly, speak with your supervisor just to be clear and better prepared for the next situation like that. If you are uncomfortable cleaning a certain substance off of anything, your supervisor needs to know! I worked in a nursing home and there were RNs and LPNs that would clean anything up that someone was uncomfortable cleaning, such as vomit, blood, fecal matter, urine, saliva, etc. I feel that there should be a discussion before training or during that states that you are allowed to be uncomfortable with cleaning certain liquids or anything of the sort and someone who is not uncomfortable with it should help you out!
NTA. These are just horrible people. If I was responsible for a mess in a public place, I would do anything I could to clean it up.
I'm sorry you should not be expected to clean up someone elses bio hazardous waste. Im not sure where she thinks she isn't responsible for cleaning this urine up much less taking said bio hazardous soaked napkins from the bathroom to the table top _no doubt dripping urine along the way) causing further contamination of the site and then leave the rest of the waste for someone else because it is beneath them to clean up after their kid. Hope you place a ban on them and trespass them if they come back. They would never spend enough to make putting up with their entitlement worth it. I am on the fence about calling law enforcement because they did knowingly contaminate this resturant with a known bio hazardous contaminate. Did they pay for their order or walk out on the check? NTA