I’m typing this from a Starbucks, where I just witnessed my first ‘secret menu’ horror story. Two girls behind me that looked like they were about 10 years old both walked up to the register and the first one asked for some weird drink that wasn’t on the menu. The barista told her he couldn’t make...
so many things wrong with this story:
-10 year olds at Starbucks
-10 year olds with iPhones
-only 10 years old and already with that stupid entitled attitude
-where are their parents?? what 10 year olds wander into a Starbucks alone??
-throwing an expensive drink out after one sip because you don't like the taste? your parents suck, and so do you
-10 year olds
I saw a lot of that at my Orange County Target Starbucks, lots of tweens and teeny boppers wandering around freely because they biked there or their parents dropped them off or they wandered there from the sports park across the street. LOTS of them wandering around, alone, with crazy huge allowances from their parents, and their own phones because you know safety first and all.
It was bizarre. Dealing with them was a lot of trouble because yeah, they are snots, and they come up with this attitude that because they’re ordering from Starbucks they have to be appropriately snobby (HAHAHA). There were a lot of free roaming kids that road their scooters or skateboards down the store aisles, or kicked soccer balls around. It was awful, and not a lot could be done because if you touched a kid to make them stop, you got in trouble. You couldn’t shame them to their parents because they weren’t there. You couldn’t make them leave because then they’d be wandering the streets of a beach town alone and get picked up by creeps or whatever (parents should be thinking about that). One time we even watched these two ~10-13 year-old girls leave with these older guys because the guys SAID they knew their parents. The girls didn’t know them, they just trusted these guys. We called security when we overheard this and yeah it was a kidnapping.
I’m all about giving kids more independence so they can learn to take care of themselves but holy mother of Jesus you’ve got to TEACH AND RAISE THEM FIRST. Teach them manners, safety, responsibility, THEN unleash them onto the world to screw up, get embarrassed, learn, but not get kidnapped or treat people like trash.
It’s unfortunately not as uncommon as you’d think.