Mama! Mama! Mama! Mama! (or, Stickers fix Everything)

If you read the title of this post... you will see what I sat and listened to for about half an hour while shelving over in children's today. This little girl, who was probably 4 or 5, kept yelling "Mama! Mama! Mama" over and over and over. And over. In a shrill, little girl voice, with that upward inflection at the end. She was sitting at one of the KiddiMacs, and her little brother, who was probably about two, was sitting at a different one, pounding his fists away on the keyboard.

"Mama" was wandering around the children's section on her phone.

I was about three steps away from grabbing my supervisor to have her talk to them, when "Mama" finally went over to them to stop them from misbehaving. After dragging them away from the computers ("Mama-ing" and fussing the whole time) and trying to get them to sit down and read, they continued to be loud. It was just headache-inducing.

Apparently the answer for fixing misbehavior is bribery. With stickers. After a couple of minutes, my only male co-worker, and older gentleman, came over to the children's section. I gave him a grateful look, knowing that he was going to say something to them. He sat down at the little table with them, and gave them each a sticker. I'm not sure what he said, but it was probably you can have a sticker if you're quiet. Which, they were. Mostly. With

a lot of shushing from "Mama."

And while there was another screaming children family, there were a couple of kids and parents today that asked for my help, politely, so that was nice :)

And here's a random book I found while shelving a bit ago....

What's wrong with this picture...?