The Goat Yard and Mother's Day

Ok first of all now that school is about to start and I am always looking for an excuse to do something other than what I need to be doing, look for more of these to show up.  Alright that being said I have been working at the zoo now for well this would be my 3rd summer so we will say this is approx 3 years of parenting technique observations. 

Now you will have to allow for some individual variation as is typical to happen in any population, and I am just automatically removing any parents that come in on White Trash Wednesday b/c they would completely throw off my statistics and really belong in their own group anyway.

But and I know some of my more feminist leaning friends are likely to jump down my throat but well it has to be said.  This past mother's day I saw more definitive examples about why the females of the human species were traditionally more apt to be involved in child rearing duties, and the main reason is that dad's as a group all seem to suffer from some form of very extreme ADD when it comes to watching their children (I have also seen those who do not fit the typical stereotype but we are statistically speaking right so bigger picture everyone)   If any of you reading this have access to ER statistics on Mother's Day for children ages say 1-6 I would be interested cause I'm willing to bet dollars to doughnuts it goes up on the second Sunday of May.

So here are a few scenarios from this weekend.  Picture it, Goat Yard, Milwaukee, 2011 (thank you Golden Girls)  dad walks into the goat yard with what appears to be a 4 year old but I will be honest for some reason I am really bad at aging kids between 3 and 6, so we're going with the median on this one.  It's of course busy as fuck in there so I'm not paying too much attention to at first until I see that this kid keeps getting into things he shouldn't, i.e. behind the goat fence, chasing goats, you know wandering around aimlessly.  Most of the time Dad is catching this eventually (FYI he is in there with 1 kid, that's it, your primary responsibility is 1 kid) So obviously I am now kinda watching the kid a little closer, after getting hit with a rush of change requests I do my quick cursory scan of the yard, and what do I see 4 yr old face down on the goat yard floor mouth open.....drool/spit string hanging from mouth, licking of floor may or may not have been happening.  Dad standing about 10ft away looking I don't even know at what but not his kid......Ok I know I tease the parents that freak out about their kid touching their clothes/face/anything after feeding the goats, but even I have to say face down in the goat yard is gross and should be discouraged at all costs.  So anyway I'm staring for like 30 seconds I'm sure just in shock that this is happening and dad is not seeing it so I start walking over to pick the kid up/alert dad his son is having a make-out session with some goat urine/feces.  When dad finally notices, and he casually walks over and stands kid up....problem solved.....no discussion about how lying face down in this location is a bad idea, just stands him up and then continues to be oblivious to son.  

Observation #2 I will make shorter b/c the previous one got long, dad walks into goat yard carrying probably about a 1 1/2 yr old.  In the middle of our yard we have a sewer grate that you know water runs down and that we hose all the goat urine and occasional missed goat poo to every morning and with the slope and grade of the yard a lot of not nice stuff tends to accumulate there....you know it's a frickin sewer grate usually not nice things accumulate there.......now we walk all the way into the yard carrying kid and at first I think kudos to you dad for not plopping your kid down directly in front of the door that everyone walks through, folks we have a thinker here today.......but now we set the curious toddler 6 inches from the sewer grate that has been collecting small pellets that look a lot like the pellets you just gave him to feed the goats....where the hell do you think his little hands are going to go?!? he's certainly not going to be interested in the goats, but he will be interested in the funny brown/yellow water he can splash in and those little browner pellets.

Ok so long story short, the goat yard was a living Mother's Day card all day Sunday essentially showcasing all the reasons why it's probably a good thing that women were selected to be the bearers of children and the primary care givers for the first let's say year of life (i.e. breast feeding and such) because with the number of dad's who were apparently distracted by shiny objects last Sunday well let's just say thank god for Mom's.

Disclaimer:  To all the dad's who may be reading this, this is most likely not a direct attack on you (I promise) it's just some anecdotal observations and I am sure many of you are great dad's..... :)   

First post and to expand on my rant regarding frappacinos

Ok so as you may have heard me complain in the past my particular starbucks I work at is blessed with an unusually high number of adults who enjoy caramel sauce and frappacinos (we are rivaled only by the mall store but seriously their median customer age is like 12 so I don't think they will be drinking any latte's anyway)

So I have some conflicting comments that were made to today by upper management mostly about how I am supposed to take responsibility for my customers and do the right thing for them......well now I just don't know what to do, because what I SHOULD be doing for those customers is informing them that drinking 2-3 24 oz extra caramel extra whip cream frapps is very very unhealthy for them that that level of refined sugars and high fructose corn syrup in their diet has been shown to lead to increased chances of developing Type II Diabetes.  Of course apparently what Howard meant when he said do what's right by the customer he meant just say yes and pour the whole damn bottle of caramel in the drink for them if that's what they want.  Because see we have these new actually really good snacks right but they are under 200 calories just supposed to be fun little sweet treats.  One of them is this caramel pretzel chocolate concoction and as a joke I was like "these are really good and rich enough that you wouldn't want a huge one.....except our customers I'm sure they'll want us to cover this in more caramel" and I was shaking my head.....to which my DM says "if that's what they want we'll give it to them"

I get that people like sweet stuff; every once and awhile I love some extra whip cream maybe some caramel and mocha drizzle on a hot chocolate kinda like having a little turtle sundae beverage. But seriously everyday that's gross......we had these two sisters who came in every day to get java chip fraps with extra caramel extra mocha extra mocha chips......this was back when I worked mostly days, then had to go back to nights, and saw them again maybe 2-3 months later, both having put on considerable weight and both talking about it and being highly confused why......at what point am I supposed to say to them you have been consuming close to 1500 calories in sugar empty calories for one small meal a day?....oh wait I mean your beverage you are drinking with your lunch

I'm just saying if I really am supposed to do right by my customers maybe educating them a little bit about their beverage choices, maybe having the right to say no I can't give you that much caramel because i feel like I am slowly killing you, if you want that much caramel on your drink please feel free to purchase one of our caramel bottles and you can add as much as you want on your own.  You know bartenders are responsible to say I'm sorry sir you are cut off no more shots for you but how bout some coffee or water?  I just want a little bit of opportunity to say that as well.

also while I am mildly concerned about their health, a waitress friend of mine recently asked why I get so angry at frappacino customers, and I said it's not all of them, but imagine you are a bartender and someone orders a long island ice tea or a daiquiri during a high rush time and you go through the difficulty of making the drink and they don't tip you.  I mean seriously ?!? it's a complicated time consuming drink so not only do I feel disgusted by the fact that you are drinking 9 oz of pure caramel but I am now disgusted by the fact that you can't even bother to tip me for making your 10 minutes of my time death shake.

Ok I feel this wasn't my strongest opening rant but it's all I have today, LOL.

Beginnings of something dangerous

Alright, so as most of you know I have a tendency to get caught up in issues, topics or ideas and like to expunge upon them making my opinion well known and understood.  and pointing out any sort of discrepancies in any oppositions opinion.

So things I welcome:

• opposing opinions so I can tear you down.....just kidding I'll be nice about it when i prove you wrong.
• comments letting me know I'm too bitter and need to cheer up a little and stop being so cynical.....someone should keep me grounded hopefully you all can  help
• comments to let me know I am awesome and you now think I should run for public office and you would vote for me (to offset the humbling I will get from the people telling me I am too cynical)
• Anything really topics for consideration, things that should be brought to my attention so I can rant about them, it's pretty open 

Please stay tuned for the first rant/observation I promise it will be a good one!

Ber-neir