Walking through a recently refurbished, and newly carpeted passenger zone en route from disembarking the plane toward immigration, an expensively dressed young woman, rolling very expensive designer luggage in one hand and an equally expensive, well-dressed designer dog in the other, stops abruptly and waits patiently for her dog to ‘do his business’, and then, without so much as a glance downwards or backwards, carries on walking as if nothing just happened…
Would you call her on it? Help her out by taking car of the mess yourself? Ignore it? Call security? Other options? :)>-
Well, here’s the thing… I did ‘Excuse me, excuse me… your dog left a mess’…she carries on walking and talking on the phone…‘excuse me, excuse me… your dog left a mess’ carries on walking…I’m racing to keep up with her ‘excuse me, excuse me… your dog left a mess’ people are looking and shaking their heads and pointing at her and she kept on walking and ignoring, finally she turned around and in a very arrogant voice said ‘what do you want me to do about it, Lady?" I was flabbergasted! "How about you find a bathroom and get some tissue, or open your suitcase and find something to clean it up with?’ Sadly, my Citizen of the Year efforts were wasted; she just blithely carried on…and left if for some unsuspecting person to step-in
I think after the polite route proved futile I might have taken a picture of her. I’m not sure I would have the guts to show it to security but I would hope the idea that I could would pressure her into picking up after her dog. It’s outrageous that she would just leave her dog’s excrement for someone else to deal with.
Good idea, Sue. Sometimes people start behaving when they think they are going to be on social media. Even if she didn’t behave, she’d still wonder about it. I might say loudly that I was going to post this all over the place, if she angered me enough.
One of my first thoughts was that if she didn’t respond to a call out to her, if I had something to pick it up, I would do that and then present it to her to dispose of - “here, I got this for you - you can dispose of it from here”.
Good thoughts, @Sue22 & @busdriver11. Then tell her you are posting it on all your social media & asking all your friends to share unless she takes care of the cleanup.
I’m glad you tried what you did. At least she knows she’s pissing people off. Of course, it’s doubtful she cares.
This is the exact scenario that pictures and public posting (saying “look what happened at the airport”) are good for - when polite efforts to make something right fail.
For many, just noticing that folks are taking pictures will cause them to change their behavior (in which case nothing needs to be posted since it’s the behavior change that is desired).
I recently watched a woman who lives up the street let her dog do its business on my lawn. The next day I saw it happen again! I ran outside (with a plastic bag) and asked her if she needed a bag. She immediately apologized and said that her husband had cancer (but admitted that was no excuse for not being a good dog owner). Basically I ended up feeling horrible that I had said anything.
I’m glad folks are trying to get pet owners to be responsible—its unsanitary for them to just have their pets leave deposits wherever they choose and making no effort to clean up. I’m sorry, but if you choose to have a pet, cleaning up is on you or whomever you hire.
I once had a lady yell across the street asking me to clean up after my dog. I was speechless, the dog had peed on someone’s grass. How do you clean up pee from grass? I just told her that I would once the dog did something that needed cleaned up. I could almost see her crossing the street to see what was (or wasn’t) there after I left.
