Owner sticks with advert’s phrasing
A Porirua business owner whose job advertisement asked for applicants to ‘‘be kind to’’ and ‘‘clean up’’ after ‘‘annoying little kids’’ says he doesn’t regret the phrasing, despite receiving a barrage of online criticism.
The ad, posted on Laughalots Playland Porirua’s Facebook page on Tuesday, was meant to attract prospective employees, but ended up generating a flurry of comments from people who felt the description wasn’t something to laugh about.
In comments that have since been deleted, parents said describing children as ‘‘annoying’’ was ‘‘in poor taste’’, and others vowed to take their business elsewhere.
In response, Laughalots owner David Christensen had swapped the controversial description out and apologised for causing offence.
‘‘It appears that some people were upset at some wording on the original advertisement. I sincerely apologise to all those who have expressed displeasure below and will start replying to the 24 people who have applied for the positions so far today,’’ a post read.
But after speaking to Stuff on Thursday, all comments were deleted, the original wording was reinstalled, and all comments disabled.
Christensen claimed Laughalots had ‘‘two of its busiest days’’ following the post, and 51 applications had been received for the two vacancies.
Christensen described the ad, which he said had been used last year with no negative backlash, as
being ‘‘somewhat tongue-in-cheek’’.
‘‘When you work with kids, the majority of them are absolutely fantastic, but there are some annoying ones and if you’re going to work with kids, you’ve got to be patient enough to be able to handle everything that comes along.
‘‘If I thought [kids were annoying], then I wouldn’t be in this business,’’ Christensen said.
‘‘I looked at the chatter that went on, and it was a minority of people who were complaining, or negatively commenting about it . . . there was an awful lot of positive chatter as well, telling Karens to take it easy.
‘‘It’s Facebook – it always happens like that . . . do I regret it? No, I don’t think I do regret it. It’s something that was posted up, in a light-hearted way, to attract the sorts of people that we want, and some people took offence,’’ Christensen said.
One business owner posted that the ad ‘‘sets an undertone that staff perceive customers as annoying’’, while another felt the company’s decision to delete comments ‘‘rather than owning [its] mistake’’ had cemented their decision to ‘‘no longer patronise your business’’.
Another said: ‘‘I think we all agree that our kids can be annoying and aren’t angels. Absolutely it’s hard working with kids, but putting ‘cleaning up after annoying kids’ in a job advert for a business run for children is very off-putting. There are better ways to word it.’’
On June 2, 2019, a Givealittle page was set up by Cindy Christensen after David Christensen, her husband, was ‘‘scammed out of $170,000’’ threatening the playland’s opening, the page said.
It attracted 11 donations totalling $410 in the eight days it was operating, with Christensen claiming none of the lost money had been recovered.