What would you do? Kid at the zoo wanted me to pay for his snacks.

First, a picture for the people who don't like words.

This llama asked to speak to my manager


Now, to the question. I'll try to keep it short but here's the TL;DR Version

Should I feel bad that I didn't give some kid that isn't mine extra money for stuff because he was assigned to our group?

Kid is probably 11

Version with more words and relevant info. Also a monkey

So at the zoo on field trip. With a small group of 2 other parents and their kids. This little boy with no attending parent gets assigned to us. No big deal, that's fine.

So I get my kids some frozen bananas, and he asks if I got him one.

I say "no, I got these for my kids but you can get one if you have money."

To which he replies "I do but I want to save it for the gift shop."

So I tell him he's gonna have to make some choices, but I did bring a big bag of snacks.

I had satsumas, Apples, carrots, celery, sweet peppers and apple sauce. He didn't want any of those. So he goes with another mom.

Little while later she walks out with him and food. She had ordered for her kid and told me she ended up spending 13$ on him.

ETA:(No, she did not do it out of kindness. She had a budget too. She asked me if he had money and I said yes he did, I told him he needed to decide if he wanted to spend it on snacks or at the gift shop.

She said "well he just came while I was buying my son something and said he needed me to buy this for him. I didn't know what to do so I did."

So I told her he had a 20 and i'd make change For them. Which is what I did. Because she had only brought so much cash. Like most other people there.

Then she gave him 3 back so he still had some cash for the gift shop. He would have had 10 bucks. Same as I told mine they could spend. )


I told him he was going to have to reimburse her. He had a $20, I took it and made change with it and gave him the balance. Gave the 13 to the lady and she even gave him $3 back.

ETA: I worded this poorly at first, I didn't force him to reimburse her. I suggested it was the right thing to do

He looked crestfallen but I told him that he was sent with a lunch, that I had snacks and he'd have to manage his money if he wanted to go to the gift shop.



Fast forward to end of day, kids are in gift shop, it's time to go, I find him at the register all upset because he couldn't find the other money I gave him and only had 3 dollars but the thing he wanted was 8. I was frustrated at this point and trying to wrangle kids back to the bus so I just gave the clerk an extra $5 and called it a day.

Was I unnecessarily mean to the kid?
Should I have just kept my mouth shut and spent some extra money on this kid?


I mean maybe I could have been a bit more gentle but I wouldn't have expected someone else to pay for my kids extras, and I think it's an important lesson.

Did I handle this poorly?

Anyway, thanks for the time. Here's a duck