My child swears!

That's the worst bloody album I ever bought.

That's an interesting question. I wonder if anyone has done any studies on this. It seems like it might be valuable for stores to know.

I only can speak for myself. When I am hungry it puts me in a bad mood. When I am in a bad mood I get what I came for and get out quick. When I am happy, I can get into a browsing mode where I buy what speaks to me.

But this is just a guess. The stores that have food out for me to try do themselves a favor as this little thing makes me happier to be there (and perhaps more likely to go).

Entitlement? Bleh.

The issue here is that you want to control how other people act.

If you want to have rules for you own behavior fine. I have no problem if you choose to not eat in a store before you have paid. After all, it is your life and your ability. I also have no problem if you choose to not hold hands with someone of the same gender, or if you choose, as a woman to not vote. But if anyone tries to force you to not vote or to not marry someone of another race, that is a completely different story. Eating food in the store is nowhere near as important, perhaps, but the principle is the same.

I do have a problem when you put your beliefs on other people. In that case I feel that people are entitled to tell you to buzz off.

This is also an issue of respect for the fact that people are different. We have different ideas and different behaviors. We have the right to live our own lives and we have the responsibility to let people live theirs.

Sometimes our ideas of our rights contradict with someone else's ideas of their rights. The original example of a couple of kids playing with a ball in a store in a way that bothers you is a perfect example of this.

You could handle this is to talk to the other person involved in a respectful way about how the ball bouncing was affecting you. Being snide and bullying about it is disrespectful and especially unfair for an adult to do to a kid. I wonder how an adult would respond if a kid asked that question in the same tone of voice.

And it is completely wrong to lecture about about toys and stores when that has nothing to do with you.

If you were sitting behind my daughter in an airplane and accidentally kicking her seat, I would want my daughter to say something. But, I would expect her to say it respectfully. If she went on some kind of wild tantrum about how people shouldn't move feet in airplanes I would be disappointed.

But the point is this. You don't get to control what other people believe or how other people act. We are each entitled to live our own lives in the way that seems best to us. Once you accept this, we will all be in a better mood.

Wait, what do you mean by "have food out for you to try"? Are you talking about samples?

That's different from "eating food before you pay for it," (a quote from your earlier post). Samples don't need to be paid for, at all.

Samples are an obvious marketing gimmick -- get you in the store ("free food!") and get you to try things that you might not have tried before ("free food!") and if you like it, you pay for more of it.

Meanwhile, just did a quick search for "study shopping while hungry" and found this:


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/617107

So may be a male-female thing.

Then this found that there were differences according to weight -- normal weight people bought more when hungry, obese people bought less when hungry:


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8916190

You know, we just go in circles. As I said before, there is a common consensus
about what's appropriate behavior and what's not, you can do as you please,
I personally don't care and hopefully never will have to deal with people like
you on a personal basis. So far so good - I must be living in a well mannered neighborhood!

I don't go shopping when I am hungry, and I have learned to leave the kid
at home too. It cost me good $ 50 more when she tags along, as she wants
to have this and that and in the end it sits in the refrigerator and she doesn't
eat it.

Aside from being hungry while shopping, you can tell by their waist line from the kind of food items people pack into their cart.

Jane, you are funny.

When you say "Common" consensus, you just mean that your bias is so strong that you are unwilling to let anyone have a differing opinion.

What gives you the right to decide what "common consensus" is?

Is there a percentage that makes a common consensus so we can take a poll? And what about the "common consensus" against interracial marriage that was held by a majority of people until fairly recently.

I also have some bad news for you. People like me, who decide to live our own lives no matter what you think the "common consensus" is, are all over the place. You can't fit people in a box. We are all different with different beliefs and different ideas about what is "appropriate" behavior.

I bet a lot of people around do things that you would get upset about about if you let them (although I hope that you are a little less uptight in person).

And, I am sure that there are some things that you do and think are perfectly acceptable that some people would get all upset about.

Live and let live.

It also just hit me how funny it to hear someone who calls themself Calamity Jane saying that everyone should follow the "common consensus" for "acceptable behavior".

Calamity Jane of course was a hard drinking, cross dressing woman of the frontiers who worked at a brothel who could beat men in a fist fight. She was anything but someone who followed anyone's rules but her own or who cared what other people think.

I bet the real Calamity Jane would eat food in a grocery store before she paid for it.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/27/acquits-man-hot-dog-theft_n_854416.html

Maybe not relevant, but in this context it made me chuckle.