Babies.

Where there are toys, there will be children. And where there are toys and children, there will be a perpetual mess. You're thinking, way to state the obvious, Aeriale. You sure are a smart cookie! Yes, I know. But I just had to throw that out there, in case you don't go into stores. Or go into kid sections. Or whatever.

Training is over. The training managers have all gone back to their respective southern states to eat grits and gush over the mountains and rain of Pennsylvania. We are stuck with the district managers, and a few adrift managers who like to come and go as they please. The retail manager we had until the end of December was certainly one to gush over. She liked to keep the stockroom a complete and utter mess, serenade us with Adele late at night, and her black hair always looked windblown, like she just waltzed out of a tornado every morning. We'll call her S.

S played favorites, like many tornado-y managers like to do. She would keep us in our respective zones (1, 2, or 3) and even though she wore bright red heels to work every day, she managed to hawkeye us without our knowing. She was a sneaky one, that S.

One day, S decides to keep me in the toy section of our store. I may have mentioned that I liked playing with slinkies...or driving the stunt RC car, on occasion. I never mentioned that I liked kids. But hey, you do what you have to do sometimes. I played along.

It was fun for a week, playing with slinkies and letting the hairy jumbo spider loose so I could scare little children (wahaha!), and driving the RC car around my section as if I raced for NASCAR. For a week, it was fun. And then it wasn't anymore. Kids whine. They beg and whine and drool and scream. And there was nothing I could do about it but smile politely at them and their parents and act as if I'm on Cloud 9 back in my toy section.

My favorite part was when the parents assumed that I liked their children. Moms think that all people should like their children. It must be innate or something. So, instead of shoving a bottle or pacifier in their child's wailing mouth, they would shove their child in my face. I can't run away. I can't grimace. All I can do is puff up my cheeks and pretend that I like making obscure faces at their baby.

Oh yes. I, Aeriale, would entertain their drooling, bald thing while the parents decided to argue over whether or not the blue or green outfit would look better on Baby Drool. Listen, I wanted to tell the parents, your baby is kind of gross. The drool is dripping on your hand and down to the floor and you don't even notice. Really? Is the outfit argument even necessary? Your baby doesn't care about the outfit and I don't particularly care about your baby, and this puffing out my cheeks thing needs to stop.

There are also those times when I have the RC car out on the floor and show the kids how to make it spin and flip and whatnot. The best part is when bratty 8 year olds misbehave in front of their parents and the parents don't do anything about it. This one kid, in particular, didn't bother to listen to my instructions on how to control the RC car in a store setting, and he quickly became out of control. The car smashed into elderly ladies' ankles, and into our rocky, breakable displays, and up the sides of my legs. His mom stood by and laughed. LAUGHED. For fifteen minutes.

Uh, Lady with Bratty Child, I think you need to leave the store and then spank your kid who is not listening to me or you or anyone's complaints. Look, he just rammed the car into a wheelchair. Now he is kicking the RC car. So....I'm going to go ahead and take the remote control and take the car to the cash register where it can be his to break and run up your ankles for eternity.

Oh, the hostility! Finally, S came to her senses and switched me from the toy section to the section where I had to model clothing for our guests...which, of course, is a story of it's own.