Had a weird experience at the convenience store the other day.
Went to buy a 50 cent fountain drink, filled it with ice and put some coke in it. Now apparently something was wrong with the plastic cup provided because the moment I actually put any pressure on the sides of the now full plastic cup as I lifted it away from the dispenser the cup immediately split down the side and burst releasing all the soda onto the floor in front of the soda machine. Since there was already a drain in front of the machine and the floor was slightly declined so that all the soda automatically went to the drain in front of the machine I thought nothing of it and decided to just leave it like that (besides throwing away the now destroyed plastic cup in the trash)
However in one of the oddest things I’ve seen in my life, a completely random female customer (and she was a customer she wasn’t an employee) IMMEDIATELY grabbed a bunch of paper towels and started cleaning the mess I left on the floor. I know she wasn’t an employee because while she was cleaning one of her kids started talking to her about something he wanted to buy before they left for his soccer practice. I just had to wander off awkwardly as this random woman cleaned up the mess I made.
So my question is two parts, what the hell did I just encounter? And second, is it my responsibility to clean it up, especially if it was all because of their own faulty cup?
No, it is not your responsibility to clean up a mess you make in a store. What I do is go to the nearest employee, sincerely apologize, and inform them of what happened. That customer was pretty freakin’ weird.
A couple of months ago, though, I had a bathroom emergency where I had to duck into a Burger King. The restroom was not fully stocked with toilet paper, and I left a little bit of a mess, but it wasn’t too terrible. I wasn’t able to fully clean it up, though.
No sooner had I walked to my car than the Burger King employee who was responsible for cleaning the bathroom actually came out to confront me over it, saying he’d just finished cleaning the restroom, and how dare I screw it up? I apologized, and he didn’t seem to think I was sincere. Well, fuck you, you didn’t give me enough toilet paper. You did NOT just service that restroom.
I didn’t say that to him, but I left a nastygram with Burger King. They apologized for the inconvenience and gave me a $5 gift card for the humiliating experience of being talked to like that in front of my mother. I haven’t been back to Burger King since then.
Legally, it is the restaurant’s responsibility if they want to avoid slip and fall and such lawsuits. But it’s being a good human to at least mention the issue to the staff and maybe throw down some napkins.
Since the paper towels were readily available yeah I probably would’ve wiped up the spill as best I can. It might’ve been a slipping hazard or been tracked through it the store and that’s because of my spill. At the very least I would’ve alerted a employee of that spill.
As for someone else wiping up your spill, that’s a good Samaritan. Sounds like she didn’t chastise you while she was down there either.
I would have put something down to start soaking up the mess and called an employee over to deal with it more comprehensively. I suspect women are more likely to at least start dealing with a spill or mess just because we’re trained that way and it becomes instinctive, especially after you have kids or pets. I used to work in C-stores and have seen first hand that the potential for disaster is pretty high if you leave a slip hazard mess like that around.
So you’d alert a store employee about a drink spill but you’d leave a toilet mess in a stall with no TP and walk out without alerting staff. Too Embarrassing for you? And an employee saw your little toilet mess and tracked you down and you get upset? You know what you should’ve done right? Get something to wipe up your mess before others meet up with your calling card(s).
It was so little of a mess that I didn’t even notice I’d left one, and I have a medical condition, and yes, I was embarrassed by it, and no, he does not have the right to confront me after I’ve left the store. If I’d been working at Blockbuster and had done that, I would have been fired.
Besides which, he was belligerent and combative about it for the better part of three minutes. And he did not once ask about my well-being. He went straight to bitching at me. So fuck him.
It would depend on the size of the spill. If it’s something that could be cleaned up with 3-4 napkins, I would probably clean it up. If it was a whole Big Gulp explosion, I wouldn’t try, because there wouldn’t be much I could do. That needs a wet floor sign and a mop. In that case, I would tell the employee. I am not going to ask for a mop and do it myself–I just don’t think that’s expected or required.
If you didn’t notice you’d left one, how do you know how big it was? It was big enough that an employee called you out on it, fer chrissakes. I’ve seen people leave large messes they seemingly didn’t notice.
Look, if I’m a violent person, and motherfucker comes out to call me out on leaving a mess in his store, I get angry, all right? For all he knew, I could have been packing heat. And that’s why retail stores teach you not to do that. That’s why if someone steals from a Blockbuster, you do not follow them out of the store or you get terminated. As it is, I don’t believe I left a mess. I didn’t stick around to look at it, for whatever it’s worth.
Am I allowed to tell you what to go do with yourself in this forum? I didn’t realize I’d left a mess, and even if I had, he had no right to come out and confront me about it, and belittle me in front of a loved one for a solid 3 minutes. Suck it up, do your job, and clean it up. Now let’s drop it, please.
From what little anecdotal evidence of the situation presented here, yes. It was absolutely unprofessional. Now, expecting minimum wage fast foodies to behave professionalally is always a big ask.
It’s not their responsibility to do so. Like, at all. Sure, it helps the staff if they do. But in no way required. Places I’ve worked were required to check bathrooms every hour and sign off on their condition as a matter of corporate policy.
Clean it up with what? The so called “peon” is the one with access to the the mops and buckets and caustic cleaning supplies with associated MSDSes and training… supposedly.
I can’t tell from your description whether the mess you made was the kind that someone else could step in and get their shoes all sticky, or even slip and fall, but if so, you had an obligation to tell someone who worked there so that they could clean it up, even if you did nothing about cleaning it up yourself. Even if not, it sounds like it was the kind of thing that somebody would have to clean eventually, so you still should have told someone.
And in a convenience store, there may only be one or two people working there, and they may have been busy with other things and unable to clean up the mess right away. So it was a nice gesture for someone else to do something, whether that someone else was you or another customer.
It wasn’t that other customer’s responsibility to clean up the mess, and it wasn’t really yours either, but she was a mom, and moms know that messes have to be cleaned up, sometimes by someone other than the person who made the mess or who is, strictly speaking, responsible for cleaning it up.