Reply to Grocery incident left kid scared of... swans

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[quote=Anonymous]While we were checking out our groceries I pointed to a balloon near the checkout area shaped like a swan to distract my toddler and was like, "Look, a pretty swan balloon!" Then the guy bagging our groceries says to my daughter, "You like swans, kid? Because they will EAT YOU. They're nasty evil animals that will attack you and they like to eat children and a swan is going to eat you!" My daughter, who is 2.5 and easily scared, starts to become distraught by this. My husband and I try to distract her while the store employee keeps doubling down, talking about a giant prehistoric swan that would hunt elephants (I admit I later Googled it and he was right about that part, apparently) and saying that a swan was going to eat our kid. Then he also made a weird remark about the brand of clothing she was wearing (there was a brand logo on her outfit). We had our infant with us in addition to our toddler, and as we're leaving this same employee calls after us that when they get older our children will "hate each other!" and I get that was probably intended to be a joke about how siblings often fight but... the whole experience was just really weird. Now my daughter keeps asking if swans are scary and will eat her.

So... should I just avoid that store in the future or am I being overly sensitive? Maybe this isn't as I weird an experience as I think? The best explanation I can come up with for what happened is that maybe the employee who kept trying to scare my toddler was on the spectrum and didn't understand social cues and that was his attempt to be friendly gone awry? Or maybe some people just think deliberately scaring children is funny? Maybe this is a regional cultural difference?

I'm confused and kind of upset by the whole thing.[/quote]

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