Oh How Cute!

“Oh your table has just the cutest little girl at it!” Exclaimed Nikki, one of the female servers.
I only could give her a grimacing look.

“What, you don’t like kids?” She said accusingly.

“I don’t like many things,” I said.

My eleven top had turned into a nightmare of two couples and their seven kids, they had taken over my section and the toddlers of the group were running rampant past customers that might actually spend some money.

“Um yeah, can we move over to that table?” asked one of my other customers.

The table was out of my section, I would have to give them up.

And they looked like the type that would drop some serious cash, including a twenty spot for me off of their two top table.

I grimaced again.

“Sure, I’ll get you set up over there.” I said.

I didn’t blame them for moving, hell I’d move too if I was them.

I blamed the eleven top and their demon spawn.

Nikki had come up to the table in the meantime and was fawning over the little girls, just as one rushed out in front of a waiter trucking through with a heavy tray over his head.

“Oh my! They are so adorable!” Nikki gushed.

As she said this one of the other little girls started breaking her crayons and throwing them across the restaurant.

“Sir, you might want to keep an eye on your girls, I wouldn’t want one of them to get hurt.” I said.

“Oh they’ll be fine.” Their father replied nonchalantly.

I spied another toddler crawling on the floor.

“Well there’s a lot of people coming through here.” I reiterated, thinking of customers and servers with drinks and heavy trays.

The man just waved me off.

Parents.

Jesus, if I acted like that when I was a kid I’d be on the way home by then, with the prospect of a hard hand against my ass.

But these days it might hurt the poor self-esteem.

So the group finally gets settled down enough to order.

Except the kids at the end of the table, they managed to fortify themselves under their chairs.

“Ummm, yah, she would like pasta with sauce on the side, not too much butter, but with chicken, can she get that on the side too? And can she have marinara instead of alfredo? And she can‘t, I repeat can‘t, have anything green on the plate, she won‘t eat it! That means no parsley or anything.” The mother requested for her daughter, for a kids meal.

No wonder people these days are so finicky and entitled.

Parenting.

“Sure sure,” I answered.

So after similar orders for the other kids I’m sitting at a $100 eleven top, not the best table sales wise.

After taking the order I was doing the usual, dodging kids in my section why trying to appease the eleven top’s annoyed neighbors.

I could tell who and what they were going to take their “ruined” dinners out on, me and my tip.

So as I was returning to my table with the adult’s salads I spotted the adults standing together in a group, with concerned looks on all faces.

“We need a band aid right away!” One of the mothers shouted.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Just get me one now!” She snapped.

“Yes ma’am.”

Returning with a band aid I asked again, “what happened?”

“We found this!” The mother hissed as she placed a sliver of bloody glass in my hand.

Yeah, I want a bloody sharp object in my hand, thank you much.

“My daughter cut herself on this, I want to speak to a manager now!” She said.

“I just don’t know how this can happen.” The dad said.

Oh man, I wanted to speak up.

It happened because you feel you don’t need to control your children.

It happened because they were crawling on the floor of a restaurant.

A floor that can get quite filthy from the hundreds of people that walk on it, drop food on it, and yes, break glass on it.

Instead I fetched the manager.

I caught part of their conversation, mostly the manager groveling and offering comps on their dinners.

The parents just couldn’t believe we ran the place with broken glass strewn about.

Well in a darkened restaurant it might be hard to find a sliver of glass that slid under a table leg.

That’s one reason out of many that children should not be crawling on the floor or under the table.

It wasn’t acceptable when I was a kid and it sure as shit isn’t acceptable now.