I work in a small museum. I am the gift shop clerk. Today it was just my manager and I working as it normally is on a Saturday. We had many people come in. One family consisting of a few children, a mother, and a grandmother cane in and the mother said the kids could pick 1 thing each. Well, her son found our little dinosaur finger puppets. He put 1 on each finger and played with them with his sister. No big deal, it was cute. He took a liking to 1 in particular and then began to shove the entire thing in his mouth. He was old enough to know this was gross and wrong if he wasn’t going to purchase it and even if so. His grandmother told him to put it back and that is when my manager piped up and said “sorry, that will now need to be purchased”. She got a little defensive and asked why and my manager said he shoved the entire thing in his mouth and I can’t sell that the another child now even if I cleaned it. I agree with her. The mother was mad, but not at us. She was upset with her son.

My question is do you agree with my manager or any policy that if something get contaminated like that that it is to be purchased by the contaminator or their parent? Same goes for broken items. Like if your child broke a jar of pickles that it should be paid for?