Just thought I'd share this.
NB: This is not going to be a bitchy rant despite first appearances. bear with
So I was at work (retail outlet, footwear department) the other day, It was almost christmas so as usual the store was packed mainly with parents accompanied by children. These children are typically loud, usually smell kinda strange and have a habit of walking along my nice tidy isles of shoeboxes and pushing them all to the back of the shelf. They are complanitory things, yelling at thier parents that they are bored, hungry or otherwise wholly unimpressed with the situation in general, while I try to find shoes that fit them with ever-waning patience. This is a typical day. I am used to this and can deal with it.
But on this particular day, I happened across a chap I recognised from a local music store, accompanied by his family - his wife and three children. The children were a girl, roughly 12, a boy roughly 10 and another boy roughly 5 or 6. And to my astonishment, these children were absolutely upstanding fucking citizens.
Not only did they NOT bitch and scream, they were polite, confident, and even articulate (even the littlest one). They payed attention to thier parents, asked politely for my assistance, the older boy even made a friendly joke about his name being the same as mine. These kids even had a mature sense of humour. I LOVE it when customers have even a remote sense of humour, it makes it seem more like I'm dealing with real people. It's amazingly rare, so to find a 10 and a 12 year old with not only a sense of humour, but a great one, was magical.
On the whole, I was extremely impressed and the whole experience really made my day (which was excellent because it was a midnighter). I don't know why it didn't occurr to me to say so at the time, (I guess I was in customer service mode, and I regret not saying something now), but I intend to visit the chap next time I'm in the music store and tell him that his kids are a credit to himself and to his wife.
Fucking brilliant.