This was a few years ago. My youngest, who is now 7, was “occasionally” being watched by my MIL. He was about 10-11 months at the time, We paid her. That’s a whole other post.
Anyways I get back from work one day to see my now ex husband in the kitchen looking worried. He’s stressed. The baby’s asleep. My MIL is in our living room, looking…solemn and kinda pissed. I quietly aak what’s up, and he says:
1.) he caught his mom giving the baby wine. Like out of a glass. He was allegedly teething and she needed the booze to medicate him. This happened more than twice that afternoon.
2.) the neighbors caught his mom putting the baby in the front seat. No car seat. They saw her put him in and take him out.
We decided to approach her. United front. We tell her:
1.) please don’t give the baby alcohol, she claimed he “was fussy from teething” and the wine “calmed him down.” I’ll bet it did. Fuck.
2.) she confessed to the car seat issue. She said he was crying in his car seat, he hated it. So she pulled over “on the highway and put him in the front seat.” Our jaws dropped. We told her next time go to a gas station, call us, you know other options? So now just puts him the front claiming “it was good enough for her kids…”
She claimed she always gave her kids “alcohol to soothe them” and rarely used car seats in “her day.”
She was not allowed to drive the kids again. And she did back off the booze.
I get it, kind of. But it definitely was a “holy shit” moment. Given how finicky my SILs were with their kids, I was pretty shocked. I still have no idea what to say about it.
Edit: attention people who think CPS should have been called. There is more to the story and my son is safe and sound. This was about 5 years ago. I’m no longer married to his dad. And yes, I did lose my shit. Privately. Screaming at my MIL and acting like a lunatic would not handle this. My ex husband apparently laid into her afterwards. It was handled. Let’s please not start calling for child abuse charges.
At my workplace, there's this boomer couple that comes in every single Sunday without fail. They post up with their laptops and sit there for hours. I've had to yell at them a couple of times about playing videos and stuff too loud, but that's beside the point. Once closing time rolls around, they never want to leave. We close at 4pm, and they will sit there until 4pm on the dot before they move a muscle to pack their shit up and get out. So they are never leaving the building until at least five minutes after we are closed, which puts us behind on other closinf stuff we need to do because we've gotta sit around and wait for them. Every single goddamn week. They've been doing this for YEARS. The lady even has the audacity to try to crack jokes about it too. I hate them so much...
ETA: I work at a library. And I don't have any control or access to the routers or the lights (those are automated 😅)