License to Steal

In an earlier chapter of my life, I had a career with a large corporation.  My daily reality involved long hours, lots of travel, and a carefully-orchestrated game of tag-team parenting.  When my son started public school, the stability of day care gave way to waves of unpredictability.  I could never be certain when the school would call and demand that our child be picked up “within the hour.”  This could occur because of everything from behavior issues, sudden fever, or as was the case so very often—head lice. 

As if getting through the school day wasn’t challenging enough, little soldiers of two-career families were marched off to “after school” programs, filling the gap between 2 and 6pm. Typically, groups of friends went together to the same destination, creating not only a convivial atmosphere among the kids, but also a safety net for the occasional parental mishap. 

After school programs were ubiquitous.  I do not know whether things have changed in twenty years, but back then they were not subject to the same standards as day-care centers, exempting them from the strict supervision ratios, square footage requirements, and other quality guidelines.  Abuses could run rampant; it was a license to steal.  For example, we discovered that one program picked our children up from school nearly half an hour late, leaving them standing outside the building in the hot Atlanta sun or pouring rain.  Then, although their school house was about two minutes away, they drove the kids around the neighborhood in a school bus for another 30-45 minutes.  It turns out that they did not have room for these older children in their building while the younger day care kids were taking their afternoon naps.  They kept them in a holding pattern until the younger kids were outside playing.

It takes a special type of person to commit to taking care of young children, all day, everyday.  The people who do this with sensitivity and compassion are angels in my book.  Unfortunately, the people in my story were indifferent to the needs of children, exploiting the lucrative demographics of their parents for profit.  There is a special place in hell for people like them.  It should be no surprise, then, that I had a memorable experience with the manager of one particular after school program—a woman devoid of integrity and conscience.  It has been nearly twenty years since this episode occurred, and my emotions are just as raw and angry today.

I enjoy sewing and was long overdue for a new sewing machine.  I treated myself to a fancy model that also performed computerized embroidery with an attached moving embroidery hoop.  It operated with a series of pre-programmed cartridges.  There is a library of cartridges available that creates everything from monograms and flowers to theme-based pictures like cartoon characters, boats, and military icons.  My son was very much into rockets in those days.  He and my husband launched model rockets in the park and we had recently taken a trip to the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral.  I found that this sewing machine had a cartridge that made rockets as well as my son’s favorite—the Space Shuttle.

As a surprise for my son, I purchased a long-sleeved denim shirt at the Kid’s Gap (suitable to be used as a light jacket) and embroidered a Space Shuttle above the front chest pocket.  My son was so excited by his new jacket and could not wait to wear it to school.  But the next day, when the babysitter picked him up from the after school program he was so over-heated he forgot about his jacket.  The next morning, when he went to put it on again, he realized he had left it behind.  I reminded him to look for it in the lost and found.

When my husband retrieved my son the next night he was crestfallen.  His jacket was gone.  I told him that I would be picking him up tomorrow and we would look for it together.  Still no luck.

My son was visibly shaken up when I got home from work on jacket day #4.  He had gotten in a fight with a boy at school and the animosity continued at after-school care.  Not only did this kid attend the same afternoon program, but his mother was the manager.  When I asked what happened he said, “Stephen (fictionalized name) was wearing my jacket!  I told him it was mine and to give it back, but he laughed in my face and ran away.”  I told my son that this was good news, because now we knew where his jacket was.  I promised to come by early and speak with Stephen’s mother so we could get the jacket back.

If I thought that logic and manners would prevail among adults, I was sadly mistaken.  I explained to the boy’s mother that my son had been looking for his jacket all week, that he had left it behind on Monday.  He was very upset to see her son wearing it.   Without missing a beat, she glared into my eyes and said, “That jacket has been sitting in lost-and-found for weeks.  It is our policy to give those clothes away to charity after a month, but I saw that jacket and thought it was too good to give away, so it is ours now.”  My head nearly exploded.  “I think you are very mistaken,” I said as calmly as possible.  “I made that jacket for my son last weekend with my new sewing machine and he only wore it once.  It was never in the lost and found because we began looking for it the very next day.”

Rather than apologize, she called me a liar.  “You did not make that jacket!” she railed at me. “It was store bought.”  I explained that although the embroidery looks like commercial quality I could very easily produce both the machine and the cartridge with which I created the embellishment.  It did not matter whether I made it or not, as the issue was that it belonged to my son and not hers.  Furthermore, I argued, it clearly was not in the lost and found for weeks as I could produce the receipt from less than a week prior.  There was no brand of logic that could get through this twisted woman’s head.  I asked her if she realized that she was the manager of a business and that I was her customer; certainly stealing from your customers was no way to run a business.  I demanded that she contact the owners, refusing to leave the premises until they arrived.  I explained the situation to them and my desire to have my son’s property returned; all the while the manager continued to call me a liar, neglecting of course to address the issue of how the jacket got into her custody.   I looked at the owner and asked, “What possible reason would I have to lie about embroidering the jacket, and what possible difference does it make whether I did or not.  She took my son’s jacket and I want it back immediately.”  He also failed to react to this blatant breach of professionalism and decency.  No apologies.  No remedies.

I spent a long time talking with the owner of this so-called child-care establishment.  I suggested that the woman he left in charge of his business was morally bankrupt and was perhaps an inappropriate leader for a child-oriented service organization.  If she was stealing from the customers, I suggested, perhaps she was doing the same to him.  I showed him the receipt for the jacket and the embroidery cartridge with the Space Shuttle design, matching my son’s garment.  I laid out the timeline, proving beyond a reasonable doubt that she had purloined the jacket.  He assured me that the jacket would be returned.  I told him that if she continued to work there they would lose my business.

The owners took no action against their corrupt manager.  It took a full two weeks until the jacket was returned in a brown paper bag without explanation or apology.  I immediately transferred my son to another after-school program.  At least a dozen other families followed suit. 

As much as we would like to believe that there is justice in this world, there are plenty of cases where jerks continue to run rampant.  It irritates me that that stupid woman still has the power to make me angry even today.   It is impossible to explain how people like that can look themselves in the mirror and not be repulsed by the ugliness.  In the end, integrity is all that matters; if only I had embroidered that on the shirt. 

Tomorrow's blog:  The Pianist