Irresponsible Moms

Let me start by saying I'm really going to bitch and be judgemental here, so you may be offended. But this has been driving me nuts since last night and I have to vent.

I work with 2 other child passenger safety techs and we take appointments 2 or 3 Tuesdays a month and rotate between Gillett and Oconto. Our Oconto site always fills up the fastest and last night was no exception. We have appointments every 45 minutes starting at 2pm and the last one is at 5:45pm. We were completely booked up yesterday and EVERY SINGLE APPOINTMENT was a WIC family whose baby had outgrown the infant seat and needed a convertible seat. Right now we have a DOT grant that allows us to give away the seats for free, yes free, to families that are within the WIC income guidelines. So let me break down my afternoon/evening for you:

2pm: got there a little late and see a total piece of shit car in the garage, turns out to be a 1993 S-10 Blazer full of CRAP. Unmarried parents with some loser friend who is knocked up. As I walk in the loser friend is showing my coworker a picture of her baby daddy on her totally pimped out cell phone who is Indian. Swell. The friend was really getting on my nerves, but the mom and dad were pretty nice and actually paid attention to what we had to say. All I could think though was how nice to not have any responsibilities and just do whatever you want all day.

2:45pm: Nice mom, actually married and has the same last name as her kid. What a novelty. The only strike against her was that she's married to a Gard and has a John Gard sticker in her window. But other than that she was a super nice mom and the kid was very well behaved. Nice change for once.

3:30pm: Ohh this was a doozy. Really young mom who just moved here from Arkansas with her 6 month old baby boy. She left her car running when she first got there. Um, what? This isn't a drive thru. We had to tell her to turn off her car. For whatever reason her 5 and 3 year old boys were still in Arkansas with their dad. This chick had her baby in the infant seat with the base and had the seat belt threaded through the carrier part. WTF? And it looked like she just threaded it through and buckled it and didn't even attempt to tighten it. That baby wouldn't have had a chance if she got in a crash. And of course the straps are super loose and the chest clip is way too low. She must have had at least 20 pairs of shoes on the floor of her backseat. Seriously people, you're coming in for a car seat appointment, what do you think we are going to do? Just look in the window, give you a free seat and send you on your way? CLEAN OUT YOUR CAR!!!!! We're climbing in to make sure your kid is safe, the least you can do is take 10 minutes to clean out the piles of crap in it. Then she talks about how some of her shoes cost $200-$300. You're on WIC, how can you afford $300 shoes? My favorite part was when she propped up the bottle of juice for her 6 month old to drink so she chould text her friend. Awesome.

4:15pm: Clean car, attentive mom, so it was pretty easy. But she really butchered the spelling of her kids' name so I felt really bad for her.

5pm: Mom with a bratty 4 year old boy who still takes a nuk (and you could totally tell with how bad his speech was) and a 6 or 7 month old baby boy in a super old truck that had to have been from the 1980's with no backseat. 4 year old's booster is covered in some sort of animal hair. Pretty nice mom but the 4 year old was wearing on my nerves.

5:45pm: This one took the cake. 2 different vehicles, 2 car seats in each. UGH. I didn't get out of there until 6:45pm. The grandma of these 2 kids was in by us a couple of weeks ago, and mentioned that the parents were divorcing. Pretty obvious because they couldn't hardly look at each other without biting the other one's head off. Mom is wearing looney tunes pajama pants and has a hickey on her neck. I spent the whole time wondering where the hickey came from. The only reason I made the connection between grandma and these kids was that the baby's name is Hemi, you know like the Dodge truck engine. Hemi. Dad pulls in in a 2005 Dodge truck and I start to wonder how a WIC family can afford this. We have a 2002 Taurus, 1998 Saturn and 1997 truck. But his truck was clean and the seats went in fairly easily. He leaves and mom pulls in with her vehicle, which is a loaner because her Jeep Grand Cherokee limited is in the shop. The vehicle she had was a Jeep Compass and it was a huge pita to put car seats in. Don't buy one people if you have kids. So I spent the time we're putting the car seats in the Compass wondering why I'm busting my ass on this car when she's going to go pick up her other one tomorrow. She basically ignores her older kid and props up a bottle for 6 week old Hemi.

I know I bitch and moan about this all the time, but seriously why can these irresponsible people keep popping out kids and I can't? Every single seat was in SO WRONG, either way too loose, or the straps were super loose, twisted or threaded really weird. Do people not realize what will happen to your kids if you got in a crash? Kids die in car crashes, one died here a couple of years ago. Every kid smelled like they came straight from McDonald's and I was getting really sick of seeing the cigarette boxes, super nice cell phones and 500 fast food bags in cars. So you can't afford a car seat for your kid, but you can afford all that other crap? UGGGGGHHHHH.....

So I was in a super bad mood when I got home at 7:15pm last night and the fact that I caught Paige's cold did not help. I slept like absolute shit last night, now my throat hurts, I'm achey and tired, and I'm extremely stuffed up again. This is getting old.