This morning while blow drying my hair to get ready for my fancy office job, I had a nightmare-ish flashback to one of the strangest things that ever happened to me while working in bookstore retail hell. Stay with me, this is a long one.

Some background information that I think will be helpful: we are in a large open space, like many bookstores, and the back half of the building divided up in two sections. One section was the childrens area and the other half is the warehouse (aka the backroom stock area) with the loading bay. All of the emergency exit doors in our store are alarmed all the time. So if someone where to walk out one of these doors, a screeching, ear drum piercing siren would cry out to alert us that someone has tried to exit one of the emergency fire doors. There are two different ear drum piercing noises to let us know if one of the loading dock doors had been opened and when one of the doors from the retail floor has been opened so we can quickly identify which door has been opened and respond as quickly as possible.

So this brings us to a nice sunny fall day when I was working on the floor with several employees and one other supervisor. I'm in the middle of helping customer when the alarm starts going off alerting me that one of the doors in the loading bay has been opened. The only way these doors open is from the inside, so I immediately think that someone was trying to steal something and took off out the back door (which sadly wasn't uncommon). The other supervisor takes off for the back door and I run to the front of the store to disable the alarm. Once disabled, the other supervisor comes over the walkie talkie and says "Hey, justined0414, you need to come back here."

So I walk back there into the loading bay and find the other supervisor. He's yelling out the back door saying "Come back in, there are trucks out here!" Being as we are on the loading bay and in a strip mall with a major box store that gets deliveries daily, there is a good chance that who ever is running out the back could get hit by one of the 18 wheelers since there is a curve creating a blind spot behind our store. I run to the door and see what looks to be a kid in his tweens running around screaming with his hands in the air in circles in the middle of the roadway. The other supervisor is completely confused and says "I have no idea what is going on. Is he okay?" So I decide to try and approach the kid and get him out of the street before he gets hit by an 18 wheeler. I walk into the roadway, about 10 feet away and say "Hey, are you okay? We need to get you out of the road. Trucks can't see you standing there." He's still screaming and running around and when I turn around to tell the other supervisor to call the cops, the kid charges at my back and knocks me onto the ground completely knocking the wind out of me.

Once I get my breath back and remember where I am, I roll over onto my back to see the kid charging at me again. I immediately jump up and run back into the building with my arms scraped and my palm bleeding, the other supervisor shuts the door and I can hear the person banging from the outside. It sounds like he is violently throwing himself into the door when the supervisor runs to the phone to call 911. The supervisor then goes over the overhead speaker and calmly says "If there is a doctor, EMT or police officer in the building, please come to the childrens section."

So here I am, sitting on a stack of book boxes, bleeding from my forearms and palms when a woman comes running into the back screaming a boys name at the top of her lungs. The boy is still throwing his body against the door when the mom opens it (queue alarm). The boy takes off and starts running around screaming again and the woman goes after him and brings him back into the loading bay. The other supervisor and I just look at each other dumbfounded. The woman starts screaming at the other supervisor and I at the top of her lungs, and we're only catching every other word. She gets up in my face and is pointing her knobby little finger in my face about an inch from my face.

I can't get a word in edgewise, so I give up and walk into the break area to clean my arms and stop the bleeding, leaving the other supervisor to deal with it. The police show up about five minutes later. The police gather us all in the back loading bay and ask us what happened. The woman starts explaining that her son is autistic and she left him in the kids section to read books, assuming that someone would keep an eye on him (there was an employee tiding up the area) while she went and sat in the cafe, had a coffee and read a magazine. She said he got confused and went into the loading bay area and then got scared and went out the door. The noise of the alarm frightened him and he started running around and screaming. When I went outside to try and get him out of the road, his mother insisted that I must have violently lunged at him and that is why he attacked me.

The two police officers were at a loss for words. The other supervisor and I were at a loss for words. The police officers spoke first:

Police Officer: So ma'm, let me get this straight. You left your autistic son in the back of a store, with no one to watch him, while you went to the front of the store, out of his sight to drink a coffee, and you assumed that the staff here would keep and eye on him?

Lady: YES! MY SON IS AUTISTIC, WHY WOULD NO ONE KEEP AN EYE ON HIM OUT OF GOOD FAITH?! THERE WAS A GIRL THAT WORKED HERE SHELVING BOOKS BACK THERE! WHY CAN'T SHE KEEP AN EYE ON HIM?!

Police Officer: "Ma'm, how is anyone supposed to know that your son is autistic? He looks like a normal 12 year old boy. Further more, this is not a babysitting service, you cannot just leave your child and 'assume someone will keep an eye on him.' Because of your negligence as a parent, your child could have seriously been injured by the delivery trucks in the back alley and this staff member (pointing at me) could have been seriously hurt. How do you think that is okay? Your son obviously needs you around him so he feels safe and you just leave him? My niece is autistic and her parents wouldn't let her out of her sight for a second. Next time, hire a babysitter.

Woman: (inaudible screaming)

Police Officer: M'am, you are going to have to leave the store, assuming no one here wants to press charges (not sure what charges could have been pressed but whatever). Your son has had a rough day and I think it would be best for everyone if you take him home and never return.

The woman grabs her son violently by the arm and drags him out of the store still yelling about how awful we are and how she hates our store and she is never coming back because of our terrible customer service and lack of attention to children and blah blah blah.

The police just look at us, speechless. I'm at a loss for words so I just say "Thanks, want something free from our cafe?" The police get their free milkshakes and I go in the back, clean my wounds and take a 30 minute nap on the couch. It was probably one of the strangest experiences I experienced while working in retail. I've been around autistic children before and I in no way blame the boy for what happened. I understand that he was scared and confused, but his mother should not have left him alone if she knows he gets scared easily.

tl;dr: Mother leaves kid unattended in store assuming someone would watch him since he's autistic, leaves and goes to the cafe, kid runs out door causing a huge confusing commotion, mother chewed out by the police.