Today, while eating at Long John Silver’s, someone was letting their kid run around, yelling and being a bother to everyone. The kid found her way to an empty booth, grabbed the bottle of malt vinegar, uncapped it and looked around to be sure that everyone saw how cute she was. I smiled and nodded my head at her. She smiled back and then took a big drink of vinegar.
Cue much screaming and spitting.
I laughed.
Guy next door has ten children I think, they spend half their play time screaming like they are being molested by Freddie Kruger. First couple of times I peeked to see who was screaming like they were being murdered, now I don’t care. I finally get the boy who cried wolf thing.
Kid’s gonna learn from that, hopefully. Ow. I know I did when I toppled a clothing rack onto myself at age 6. I lost my right thumbnail, and learned to not play in clothing racks ever again.
Today–well, my boyfriend and I call them “spawn.”
The cluelessness of some people with children amazes me.
Once I was at a restaurant that had hot sauce on the table along with the salt and pepper. A little girl at the table next to mine was doing the usual two-year-old’s “Ooh, what’s this thing?” with the table accessories, grabbing things, unscrewing the caps. etc. She started to play with the hot sauce bottle.
I said to the guy sitting at the table with her, “Um, you really shouldn’t let her play with that.”
The guy shrugs and says nothing.
I tried harder, “Because that’s hot sauce, and if she gets it on her hands, and touches her eyes…”
The guy just said dully, “As long as she’s quiet.”
Uh yeah, doofus, but she might not be quiet for long. Idiot.
In fact, she might be very loud for quite a long period of time.
But of course the clueless guy won’t do anything to stop the noise.
I think the clueless folks in charge of the vinegar drinking child had no clue why she ran back to them, screaming and wiping her face on their clothes. They pretty much acted like it was all normal and kept on eating and talking.
I do know that I shouldn’t have given her the nod. I did do the right thing in the end.
I told one of workers what had happened so he could wipe the table, mop the floor and toss the bottle. The look of annoyed disguest on his face was much like the one I saw on a waitress when I told her that she needed to wipe the miniblinds before the drooly chocolate cookie hardened.
That bites grude. It would make me nutz to have to live next to that sort of noise. At a sit-down restaurant, I can and will ask to be moved.* Moving homes is more complicated.
This happened at a fast food place. I expect there to be screaming kids running around at fast food places. I know that I probably shouldn’t have encouraged the spawn to drink the vinegar. Maybe I’ll find some remorse in my heart some day.
*I refuse to be seated next to a table that has screaming kids. I use my normal voice when telling the hostess that I want a table in the no screaming and throwing section. For some reason, the parents who can’t hear their kids CAN hear me and often get offended.
I once worked at a deli in Michigan. Every week the women we called “Friday mothers” came in. They ate, chatted, and let their rug rat spawn run all over.
There was a lawyer who came in on Fridays as well. He was blind, and had a guide dog. We preferred the dog to the kids. The dog sat quietly under the table and was a perfect “gentleman”
It’s the kids we wished we could have leashed and muzzled.
Ummm, I think you made a mistake. Let me fix that for you.
“I refuse to be seated next to a table that has screaming kids and clueless parents.”
Better? 
I’ve posted this story before, but I think it bears repeating.
Once, my 6’5" man friend and I went to Red Lobster on a Saturday evening for a nice meal. I know RL isn’t exactly haute cuisine, but as two people can easily spend upwards of $100 for a meal, you do expect to not be subjected to such things as screaming kids. However, there was a couple with a new baby seated in the booth behind us, and the baby was crying, crying, crying. My big friend said a couple of times, “I wish someone would shut that fucking baby up”, and then the couple got their food boxed up to go. The male of the couple made sure to glare at us on their way out, but of course, didn’t say anything. The moral of the story is- go places with large, physically intimidating companions.
Better yet, if you walk in and see and hear screaming, uncontrolled kids, let the staff know that you are chosing to eat elsewhere, and why, and then do so.
Lost business tends to get their attention.
A couple of weeks ago the spouse and I were eating at Chipotle. There was a man there with two kids: a girl of maybe 2 or 3, and a boy of around 6. They must have been waiting for something, because they appeared to be done with their food and were just loitering around the door. And the girl was screaming and crying and doing that toddler whine thing the whole damn time. The boy was quiet, just kind of lurking around playing with his toys and being well behaved. The girl never shut up, and Dad did nothing to comfort her or shut her up. It was raining pretty hard outside so I realize it would have been difficult for him to take her outside (though they could have gone to their car, I would think), but it was getting increasingly more frustrating that he was making NO effort to shut her up.
And of course they parked themselves right in front of the only exit to have their screamfest, so we had to walk past them (I had to say “excuse me” to get Dad to move the kid out from directly in front of the door so we could actually GET out.)
Ugh. I hate it when parents just let their kids shriek and cause a scene in restaurants. I expect a reasonable amount of kid noise in fast food places, of course, but nonstop crying/screaming? No, thanks.
On a related note, yesterday one of my Facebook friends posted a video of her 2 year-old in a clothing store, spinning and running and acting like a maniac. Several people posted “oh, how cute!” and things like that, so I decided against posting my own opinion- “control your brat in public!”
Your big friend sounds like an ass.
I’ve told this story here before too, I think - we were in our local pub one night when there was a family in there with their screaming baby (for some reason, this pub occasionally has children in it - the parents don’t seem to understand that it is a PUB, not a family restaurant). We were there with my husband’s old friend, who is not a shy, retiring kind of guy. At one point after we had listened to the kid scream for a while, he said, “Shut UUUP!” in a slightly loud voice - not intended to be loud enough for anyone but our table to hear, but the acoustics of the booth we were in were odd, and it amplified his voice so that it kind of rang out across half of the pub. My husband said that was one of the very few times in his life that he’s seen this friend embarrassed by anything. 
I think the people with the screaming baby at the table were more of an ass. And I don’t control his behavior anyway, he is a grown man and not my son.
I’m with you (and your friend) on this one - I’m guessing your friend wouldn’t have said anything like that if the parents had either not brought a colicky baby to a restaurant or did something about it when it turned out that their baby wasn’t having a good time.
Here’s a sign we saw at a restaurant on our trip to a local hot springs this February -it was so awesome we took a picture of it. 
Hotel I was staying in a couple of days ago and am about to return to. French couple with a three year old and a four year old (at a guess). Kids are running a full circuit of the bar squealing EEEEEEEEEEEEE, over and over again. The parents ignore them. “Regarde-moi papa! Regarde-moi!” Parents shrug. After a long time of this one of them whacks a waiter in the nuts. He does his best to smile and brings the kid back to the table. Parents release it again. Continue until bedtime, which in these kids’ case was 10pm.
Next morning at the breakfast buffet they were at it again, but this time reaching their hands up and playing with the food, including the younger one sticking his entire dirty fist into a bowl of yogurt. The parents said “ah, mignon” to that.
So adorable! I do hope they’ve gone when I get back.
That’s a cool sign but super-awkward working. “noise kept to a level”?
Yet you applaud his actions. Yes the people at the table were asses but so was your friend.
