A busy mom was shopping for household supplies and groceries at an Australian Woolworth store when her toddler suddenly got sick and threw up on the tile floor. The woman was almost done with her shopping and was at the self-checkout aisle when her young child became violently ill and threw up. Now, the Australian mother is coming forward to complain about her experience at the Woolworth grocery store when the supermarket employees “made her” clean up her child’s vomit from the self-checkout area.
The mom explained that she was in the grocery shopping store with her children when her two-year-old son became ill and threw up near the store exit. Because the mother did not want to see her child so sick, she tried to comfort her little one and apologized on behalf of her child to the supermarket staff.
However, the supermarket workers “insisted” that the mom had to clean up her child’s throw-up herself. Although the store likely had someone on staff to clean the floors and clean up messes when they happen, which can happen pretty frequently at a grocery store if a shopper drops a jar of something like pasta sauce and it splatters everywhere.
The mom obliged and began to clean up the throw-up near the store exit. However, she was left to wrangle her two children all alone while trying to clean up the mess. The issue took forever for Mom to resolve, and she had to scan the rest of her groceries while her son was covered in his own vomit.
The Sydney mom turned to a social media group to see if she should complain to the grocery store about how their worker made her clean up the mess. She was at the grocery store on Sunday shopping for school lunches for her two- and five-year-old children.
“Then I started to get really frustrated and flustered (I wasn’t rude or anything like that); after I settled my son, I apologized to the staff for having to get someone to clean up, and the worker turned to me and said, ‘no, you have to clean it up.’”
Mom was feeling anxious and didn’t argue and began to clean up the mess.
“My son was being a real handful the whole time, and we were so close to the front entrance that opened up to a busy road,” she said. “I started to clean, and the employee told a worker to stand over me to make sure I cleaned it up. Meanwhile, my son was trying so hard to run out to see cars.”
Mom was extremely stressed by the situation.
Readers sided with Mom.
“I’ve worked in retail for over twenty years and seen so many sick kids and grandparents. Never have I seen someone clean up their mess,” one commenter wrote.
“As someone who worked in retail, they should have assisted her by at least scanning her groceries while she tended to the kids,” another person said. “Or offered to watch them while she was cleaning up so that the kid didn’t run out.”
