First of all, some of you are Photoshop wizards! All the JennCone ones are amazing, but the whack-a-mole creation is pure ART. I had to cover my mouth to keep from bursting out laughing at my desk at work when I saw it
![Clapping hands :clap: š](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/joypixels/emoji-assets@5.0/png/64/1f44f.png)
![Skull :skull: š](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/joypixels/emoji-assets@5.0/png/64/1f480.png)
Speaking of work, while the Slackers are clearly on a different level when it comes to being shithole parents, there are unfortunately plenty like them all around in the "real" world. I work in a school office, and yesterday after school, a meeting was held in the conference room. Two teachers were part of the meeting, and between them, they have 3 girls all in Pre-K together. In our small rural county, children of school employees are allowed to ride the bus every day between the school where their parent works and the school they attend, so that their parents don't have to deal with drop-off and pick-up.
So these teachers park their three very young girls on the floor in the inner hallway outside the conference room. They place a laptop in front of them with some cartoon playing, tell them to be quiet and stay put, and go into their meeting with the door shut. I roll my eyes, but whatever, not my problem. Or so I thought.
The last 30 minutes of every day, I have to cover the front desk in the main office, so shortly after the meeting starts, I go up front. Like I do every day, I leave my office door open and the light on. About 10 minutes before it's time for me to go home, I hear the girls start arguing over something, yelling "No!" and all that. Of course, they can be heard in the conference room, so one of the moms comes out and breaks it up, telling her child to sit down, which she has to do 3 times because her kid never listens to her.
A couple minutes go by, and then the mom comes out where I am with an upset look on her face. She says, "I am SO sorry, but our kids have caused a squishy ball catastrophe in your office."
![Flushed face :flushed: š³](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/joypixels/emoji-assets@5.0/png/64/1f633.png)
Just last weekend, I bought a pack of three of those squishy, sticky balls full of glitter. I had been wanting one myself for when I get stressed or bored, but most of us also keep little pop-its and things like that on our desk for when students are in our office (though adults tend to play with them just as much, lol).
So I had two balls on the edge of my desk near my seating area, in a basket with the rest of the toys, and then one in a completely different area, up high by one of my computer screens, that was mine to play with. The girls had found all three and somehow destroyed two of them in short order. Assuming they were fighting over them, I don't know why, because there were 3 balls and 3 girls, but they were 3 different colors, so maybe that's why
![Woman shrugging :woman_shrugging: š¤·āāļø](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/joypixels/emoji-assets@5.0/png/64/1f937-2640.png)
Regardless, there was glitter, liquid, and tiny little gel balls ALL over my desks and the carpet
The mom was apologetic of course and cleaned up some of the mess after I left, and she said she'd replace the toys, which I wasn't really worried about. I was just pissed about the principle of the whole thing. I don't blame the kids, really, because they're preschoolers; of course they're going to go where they shouldn't and get into stuff if they're unsupervised. Just as with the Trackers, the blame falls squarely on these parents who refuse to actually parent their children. And the rest of us have to deal with the fallout from it, in tiny and huge ways, the rest of their lives...