In my neck of the woods, when it comes to describing restaurant plates, red-hot and sizzling are pretty synonymous.
Actually, the only food I’ve ever been served at a restaurant that sizzles is fajitas and if you let your baby order fajitas, well, I think it’s on you.
I think that a family-oriented restaurant would probably see a lot of business if they made a point of teaching new servers to not put various objects in front of toddlers. But it’s not something that I would assume all servers are going to do automatically. and since, based on the parent reports we have in this thread, it appears to be something that’s not changing, the parents who are upset about it should either make a training video or re-adjust their expectations. Because you can complain in this thread all day long, but Suzy Q. High Schooler is still going to put the fajitas in front of your two year old.
Please learn to read complicated sentences scratch llll. I owned a restaurant. It is not presumptuous to think all wait persons are stupid. It is only a slight inaccuracy. And a parent is the final person responsible for the well being of their child, and no number of failures by others to protect that child obviates the parent’s responsibility to do so. They must take the actions necessary to keep hot plates away from their child whether a waitress is using common sense or not.
“Red hot” means that it’s so hot that it’s visibly glowing red. This requires a temperature of a few thousand degrees. This is not at all synonymous with “sizzling”, and if the parents are ordering something sizzling with a long-reached toddler at the table, that’s the parents’ fault, anyway. If we’re not talking about sizzling plates, then it’s not a problem, because it’s not going to be hot enough to burn the kid. It’s not that we don’t care about waitstaff endangering children, it’s that we don’t care about waitstaff doing harmless things.
Um, red hot means red. And hot. And sizzling means, well, you get the point. One is a visual indicator of high temperature, one is auditory, and while they aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, they certainly aren’t synonymous.
Then you’ve never had the pleasure that is sizzling rice. Which is sizzling. And rice.
And you must not have read my earlier post where I recount the sizzling fajita skillet incident (band name!). Please do, go back and read it for a great example of what we’ve been talking about. Go ahead, take your time, I’ll be here when you get back.
And when Suzy Q. High Schooler does something of such ineptitude that it would surprise me coming from Suzy Q. Pre-schooler, I reserve the right to call her an idiot on a message board in the backwaters of the internet, without folks resorting to hyperbole and accusing me of demanding that the waitstaff babysit my kid. Seriously, my 5-year old has learned not to put shit in front of the baby that doesn’t strictly belong in front of the baby. Granted, he’s had a few years experience, and he is pretty smart for a 5 year old, but still - I’d expect a 20 year old waitress to have the deductive powers to understand that the intersection of heat, porcelain, and baby flesh = a shitty tip at best, or a discussion with management at worst.
Does it mean I’m sitting around waiting for waiters to do something stupid, then waiting for my kid to do something kid-like, just so I have something I can bitch about to you miserable cretins? No, because I’m not fucking retarded, and to suggest otherwise simply means you either have a bone to pick with me personally, with people who have kids, or with people who bring kids to restaurants. Or maybe you are very, very dim. Could be that.
And unless the OP and friends are in the habit of frequenting the restaurant in that SNL sketch with the super hot plates, we can take it as read that when they say something is red-hot, they do not actually mean glowing red but simply, extremely hot. This is called context and it’s useful.
CPofI, the simplest solution here is to not fob off plate-watching on other people.
I disagree - we went to a family restaurant once, and only once, several years ago (who shall remain nameless, but it rhymes with Crapplebee’s), and ordered mac and cheese for my oldest daughter, who was two at the time. The fucking asshole of a waiter brought the mac and cheese out, without saying a word about the fact that he’d put it under the salamander while the rest of our food was cooking.
Three blistered fingers, many tears, and an angry discussion with the manager later, we got the fuck out of there and never went back. And that was a kids’ plate.
Yes, when plates are put under a salamander, they can be hot enough to burn little baby fingers quite badly.
Here’s a suggestion. The next time you eat out, why don’t you politely ask, “Would you please not put the hot plate next to my child? He doesn’t yet know that hot things will burn him.” As opposed to expecting him to read your mind.
If you are a regular and always get the same waiter, and are otherwise pleased with his service, he’ll remember the next time and you shouldn’t have to tell him again. And in the meantime, he’ll probably catch on and not put any hot plates next to other people’s children.
Service will improve for everybody. Win-win all around.
Read my last post. Something doesn’t need to be glowing to burn a kids fingers. Are you seriously going to nitpick every sensible post in this thread rather than just admit maybe some of us have a point?
Seriously, are you reading any of what I’m writing?
The issue at hand is not that I wish to “fob off plate-watching on other people”, it is simply this: that my dining experience would be much more pleasant if morons wouldn’t put shit near my kids that has no fucking business being near my kids.
And considering the waitstaff’s primary responsibility is ensuring my dining experience is as pleasant as possible, I expect them to use their goddam brains to determine what’s safe to put right next to a baby. For those of you who might be unsure of what a baby might grab, this list includes but is not limited to:
[ul]
[li]hot plates, skillets and other heated food conveyance items[/li][li]bowls of anything spillable that is obviously not for a baby (no, Skippy, I did not order the five-alarm chili for the 12 month old)[/li][li]containers of any sort of liquid without a lid on top[/li][li]anything - anything made of glass[/li][li]sharp objects[/li][li]and meat grinders*[/li][/ul]
*Ibid.
Seriously, how can you honestly argue against the idea that the waitstaff is at least partially responsible for doing the absolute bare minimum required to ensure that my family’s dining experience doesn’t include burns, cuts, wet and/or scalded laps, etc.?
Quick question: Would you personally attempt to place a hot plate (or open glass of liquid, or a sharp knife) near a 12-month old baby if someone didn’t explicitly tell you not to?
If yes, you are either stupid, careless, or hate babies.
My point is, some people aren’t good with non-verbal cues. A polite request will go further with some people than glaring at them and muttering behind their back will.
Non-verbal cues?!? Is the drooling, tiny little person gnawing on a spoon and sitting in the high chair with the three foot clearing around him a non-verbal cue, and does it take a degree in higher maths to figure out that he will probably grab shit you put in front of him? Of course if someone puts a plate near my kid, I’m going to ask them politely to move it. I don’t think anyone here has suggested that we would or should do otherwise. The only time I’ve ever gotten outwardly angry about it was the aforementioned idiot at Apple… Crapplebee’s, and that’s because he put a goddam kids’ dish under a salamander.
We’re just venting at the stupidity of people who make our dining experience less than what it could have been - and sure, this stupidity is banal, as someone pointed out earlier. Another way to describe banal would be, let’s see… mundane and pointless. And when Mundane Pointless Stuff happens, sometimes I feel IMust Share. See what I did there? No, seriously, did you really see?
Now, if you forgot which forum you’re in, I’ll help you locate it - look up at the top of the page, at the little links across the top, and look at the second link from the right. Yeah, the one that says “Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share (MPSIMS)” - you’ve got it! Yaaayyy you! Now tell me, did I miss the part where it said - “Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share (MPSIMS) - now with all the threadshitting you can eat!”? If I did, please let me know - I might need to start wearing my glasses.
To close before I stumble into bed: I’ll tell you what - if you have enough kids, and/or go out with them enough, you won’t be able to catch everything. Just as toddlers have ninja-like skills, so also do moronic waiters who seem to pick the one moment you are least prepared to intercept potential problem items - the other parent’s in the bathroom, you’re dealing with another kid, and/or maybe several waitstaff are attending the table at once. And where there are idiot waiters, I’ll be there, waiting… to lodge a mild complaint in a pointless forum on an anonymous message board, only to deal with a veritable tsunami of mediocrity making hyperbolic misinterpretations of my complaint and making disparaging remarks about my parenting skills. Go Dope!
My, I certainly pressed your hot button there, didn’t I?
In case you weren’t reading along, my comment wasn’t about you. I was replying to ntucker, who said:
He admits that not everybody has a clue and he’s prepared to deal with it. However, he is waited on by the same person almost every time he is there. If that person, who he describes as “very nice” and who he seems to like, doesn’t have a clue, doesn’t he think it would be to his benefit to clue him in? Instead of expecting him to read the lines of irritation visibly rising from his head and shoulders? If he just tells the guy one time not to set teh hot in front of his kid, then the waiter will remember from one time to the next and that should be the end of that conversation.
Of course, if you’re not waited on by the same person every time, then your mileage may vary and it’s a crapshoot. But since I wasn’t addressing you, I am puzzled at why you seem to think you’re being attacked. If you want to take umbrage and leave in a huff (or a minute and a huff) and all that, that’s your privilege, but I am at a loss over the outrage by my comment which was intended for another person. If ntucker takes offense at what I said, that’s up to him and I would fully expect it, but I suspect your outrage at me was purely recreational on your part.
Of course, if I am wrong, and ntuckerdoes ask the server every time to not put the hot plate down in front of the kid, I will take my 100 lashes with a wet noodle cheerfully and without complaint.
And the economy sucks and everyone needs a job…which means you had better be darn good at doing yours because I don’t need to patronize the restaurant you work in, there are tons that are struggling to stay open. And if I’m a restaurant manager, I can hire someone else who engages their brain, they are probably out there.
In my case, I don’t blame the waiters because my 18-month-old daughter is in the 99.5th percentile on height and weight, so if she’s in a high chair unless she’s actively babbling at the time most childless people cannot readily distinguish her from a 3-yr-old who has much different requirements regarding table safety and comfort.
Took the girls out last night. When we got to our favorite Mexican food restaurant, I asked the hostess who our server was going to be. Even though they told us we were going to have about a 15 minute wait, I requested to be seated in the section near the window overlooking a small lake in the back. That meant that Tony would be our server. Before sitting down to wait on our table. I went in search of Tony, a 19 year old college student. Upon locating him while he was hustling from the kitchen out to a table of 9 that was just about to receive their entrees, I handed my 18 month old daughter to him. He looked at me kind of befuddled. I explained to him that we would be dining in his section later that evening, and that he would be watching over my daughter while we were in the restaurant. I then turned back to go sit and wait with my wife. My daughter screamed out as walked away, because she still as some separation anxiety, but the only way she’s going learn to get over it is to experience it.
Once I got back to my wife, she told me that she wasn’t interested in Mexican food anymore, but Chinese sounded better. Fortunately for us, their is P.F. Changs right next door. We kind of looked at each other and then I informed the hostess that my wife and I would be dining at the P.F. Changs next door, but that Tony could go ahead and feed our daughter a cheese quesadilla once our table was ready, and that we would be back later to pick her up. I also mentioned to the hostess, that once the food was ready from the kitchen, that Tony should put it on a cooler plate before serving it to her. Before she could respond, my wife I were out the door.
Luckily we got to P.F. Changs while their happy hour specials were still going on. We had a wonderful meal and when we got back to the Mexican restuarant, I found the table in Tony’s section with our daughter sitting at it. There was quite a bit of food on the floor, but our daughter was very excited to see me. The kids meal was $4.99 with a drink. I left $10.00 on the table because I thought Tony did a wonderful job, especially with all of the upfront direct conversation we had (thanks to all of the wonderful advice I got here) and I felt that Tony really deserved the extra large tip.
Oh, I know you weren’t replying to me. Did you follow my instructions, and discover the fact that this thread is indeed in MPSIMS? And now that you’ve been availed of that little tidbit of knowledge, you still want nitpick an on-topic post in a thread that, by definition, is Mundane, and Pointless, and… Ah, fuck it, I give up.
