They Are Our Future

A semi-regular enters the store with a man and a child of four or five in tow. Apparently she had begun seeing this gent at some nebulous point and they've decided that Saturday will be kickass movie night. Fernando has never had any trouble with this semi-regular before.

But this time a child is involved.

The first thing which sets off Fernando's annoyance radar is that the kid is running around the store like he just downed three liters of energy drink. He crashes into one of Fernando's racks and sends DVD cases tumbling to the ground. The semi-regular barks at the child to behave while the parent (there's a distinct familial resemblance between the man and the boy) keeps doing his own thing. Well, okay, he made half-assed noises of chastisement but his waggling of the finger carried no threat and so was disregarded by the little demonspawn.

The kid gets bored of running up and down the aisles before long and reaches the conclusion that Fernando's life needs a bit of boundless joy added. He makes a sound like a revving engine and makes a running leap into the office area, then pivots on his heel and sprints out, straight down the aisle between the racks directly in line with the door leading to Fernando's sacrosanct back room. He doesn't let the door deter him, no sir. He twists that knob and opens that fucker right up and vanishes into the room which had just been partially renovated and recently cleaned.

“I'm sorry, nobody's allowed back there,” says Fernando, moved to action at last. He tries honey on these annoying flies. “Please could you get your son out of there?”

“Why? It's no problem. I'll make sure he doesn't get into anything.” Dad says this while not paying attention to his offspring's hijinks

Well, that didn't work. Time to transition to dick mode. “Okay, well, nobody is allowed back there. That's just the way things are.”

This makes sense to him, so Dad flails parental authority about ineffectually by offering inducements for the kid to come out (yeah, sure, reward your kid's shitty behavior by promising them ice cream if they stop acting like hellions). The kid gets bored of the amazing sights back there, like giant tubs of drywall compound and stepstools, and returns to the front of the store of his own accord. Semi-Regular Customer, meanwhile, has apologized profusely about this behavior, but “you know how kids are.”

Maybe it's time to set up a D&D-style trap on that thing. It can only serve for the betterment of our species.