'AITA for asking a customer's kid not to touch something? She freaked out on me.' UPDATED

"AITA for asking a customer's kid not to touch something?"

I (24M) work at a popular fast food restaurant. I've been working here since this location opened, and I love working here. I like my co-workers, my boss is great, and I've never had any problems with customers. Until today. We have a self serve drink machine near the front of the store.

Today, a family of 3 came in. A mom, dad and their daughter, who looked about 4 or 5. I was the cashier for the day and dad came to take their order, while mom went to sit down at the benches we have at the door to scroll on her phone. Their daughter, however bee-lined to the drink station.

Noticing the daughter about to stick her hands inside the spigot for the iced tea (which is separate from the soda machine) I calmly say (I didn't raise my voice at all, they and another family were in the store) “Excuse me little one, could you please not touch that?"

Mom looked up from her phone, immediately got defensive and yelled at me "Don't yell at my child! I'm right here, you could have just gotten my attention!"

Now, I get it. Stranger danger and all that, don't want strangers talking to your child. However, I needed to stop her before she actually touched it.

Its a health hazard, people get drinks out of that, and I don't know where your daughter's hands have been. Your entire family just came from outside. She could have had peanut butter residue or something on her hands and the next person to drink out of it would have went into anaphylactic shock. And I didn't raise my voice. I used a gentle voice just to get her attention and not contaminate the spigot.

I apologize to the mom and explain the above, minus the outside part. She however isn't having it, and yells at me again that shes right there and not to speak to her child. Dad is right there at the register, just waiting for this to finish so I can take his order. So I apologize to her again and turn to her husband to take his order.

As soon as I turn to her husband, she's back on her phone, now with her daughter sitting next to her, hand around the shoulder. AITA? Should I have done anything differently? I've already told my boss, and after they left I still disinfected and sanitized the spigot, even though I stopped her before she touched it. I felt like if I did it while she was still there, she would have had another meltdown.

Commenters had lots to say in response.

Remember-Glass-Ass wrote:

NTA. I would have told her that she needs to watch her child. I spent five years at Burger King and a year at Taco Bell. Customers are a huge pain and at some point I just got sick of their bullshit. Like the people coming in asking for water glasses and then stealing soda. I once kicked a family out because their kid wasn't wearing shoes.

Rainemist wrote:

NTA.

If the mom didn't want her daughter to be "yelled" at, she should've been watching her and tell her to come back to the table.

burnoutthesquirrel wrote:

NTA.
I feel like even if you told the mom what her kid was doing she would still get pissed for trying to control her kid.

Suitable_Doubt7359 wrote:

NTA, some people choose not to watch their children and then get upset when someone else says something to their child. Unfortunately she will not be the last parent that you have to speak to about their child. You did it right and you will have to do it again.

The next day, OP shared an update.

Edit/Update- Thanks for your feedback. While it may seem obvious I wasn't in the wrong, I was doubting myself since this was the first time I've witnessed someone got so defensive over their child doing something wrong. Just the other day, we had a kid climb up on the table after not listening to his mom, but when I gently told him to get down, and did, mom thanked me. So other lady's response surprised me.

So today is my day off and I just got off the phone with my boss. I'm not in trouble, and she reassured me about that. She called to tell me that the mom came back and tried to complain. This is secondhand from her, so some of it might not be accurate.

According to her, lady came alone and tried to file a complaint that I "screamed" at her child and frightened her. I am so glad the restaurant has cameras with audio, so my boss played back the incident for mom to watch. Boss said she had to max out the volume because she could almost not hear me over the generic music we have playing in the store.

After the video played, Boss says to lady, "So, you want me to punish my worker for stopping your kid from messing up all that iced tea? Because if he hadn't, and she successfully did so, I would have made you pay for all the iced tea she ruined."

And she would have. My boss is a short middle aged black lady from the south. She knows how to insult people and make it sound like a compliment (don't worry, she doesn't use this power for evil). Not to mention, we had just made that tea, so the container was near full. (Container holds about 5 gallons.)

Boss said lady got wide eyed and backpedaled hard on her stance, told her to thank me on my next shift and left the store. Then called me, since she thought the whole thing was ridiculous. And now looking back on it, I kinda agree. I'm gonna enjoy the rest of my day off. Maybe stop by the store and buy my boss something nice.

The commenters had lots to say.

SnakeJG wrote:

"I (24M) work at a popular fast food restaurant. I've been working here since this location opened, and I love working here."

Nobody I know who works in customer service has such high job satisfaction. Whatever they are paying OP's Boss, they should really increase it, because she's definitely the reason people enjoy working there.

d38 wrote:

The fact that the woman came back later and complained, trying to put OP's job in jeopardy is what really annoys me.

She had time to calm down and think about it, but nope.

emmefunnyman wrote:

At my workplace, we have to deal with parents like this all. the. time. A kid ruined three things of product and probably would’ve done more damage if my coworker hadn’t intervened. Coworker was totally polite, basically just had the kid take responsibility and help clean up a bit, and lo and behold the mom tried to file a complaint against them for “rudely confronting their child” or some other similar BS.

She was so lucky we don’t charge for damages to demo products like that (we just write it off + replace since usually people mean well, accidents happen) because I don’t think she would’ve sung the same tune if she had to pay what was at least 50$ of product, if not more.

princess_ferocious wrote:

One of my nieces managed to get behind the counter in a bakery and poke a hole in an entire cake. Luckily, the cake was delicious, because of course we paid for the whole thing and brought it home and shared it around. If you don't control your kids you should expect to have to cover the costs.