"For your troubles---"

Yesterday, a gob of children with loud squeally voices found my last nerve and began poking it with a stick. Screaming inside is a nasty little habit for which I have no patience. It's mean, it's rude, and if even a goddamned toddler can be taught Inside/Outside voices with relatively little pain, it behooves every parent to take a little time out of their busybusy schedules and actually, y'know, parent.

Instead of any of that idealistic-parenting pap, what I received yesterday was this:
a torn piece of notebook paper folded around a $50 bill, handed to my employer, handed to me. It read:

"For your troubles--
ps. It wouldn't hurt you to learn how to hide the fact that you despise children---if just for the five minutes my kids are in the shop."
(parent-customer's name)

I read it quickly and put it away, not having much time for anything but work while I was there, thankfully. I didn't read it later, after I got home, but I thought about it and actually felt kinda bad for hurting this guy's feelings. Brain kept trying to think about it in its nightly insomniac shuffle, trying to make me obsess over the asshole I surely am. I put off and put off, wording and rewording my apology to this guy until I went to sleep.
Then I sat down to write this morning and read the note again.

~fuckin bullshit~

I mean, I am in the service industry, so I should have the patience of a goddamned saint. I should be superhumanly able to deal with every idiot who thinks I owe him somethin based on our relative positions around a countertop, but uhm...

Y'know,
I'm human.
I hate people just as much as everyone else does,
probably more.
I hate being stuck inside any enclosed space with a screaming anything,
but especially children with their freaky-loud glass-shattering registers.
Fingernails on a chalkboard?
Doesn't bother me.
Screaming kids?
I'll happily blow my brains out to avoid them.

Happily.

So, was this guy just trying to buy me off? I understand the snarky note, but what's with the $50? What does the half-C have to do with his children? Is this the New Parenting? Just fuckin throw money at whatever stands in the way of your child's whimsical desires? If s/he wants to scream her fuckin lungs bloody in public, does daddy just pay off the people who are most affected by it? Pay off the people who'll stand up with a "Dude, that's really not cool in here"? Do I get another $50 if I'm rude to his offspring next time? What's the protocol here?

For the moment, I'm stuffing the 50.spot into the Jazz Fest fund and resolving to exercise more patience and empathy with the people I endeavour to serve.

I wish more people would give me big bills when I offend them.
I'm sure I do it a lot.