SO and I stopped for lunch at a local fast food Thai place the other day. As I was eating my Green Curry Tofu, I look up to see SO gazing over my shoulder with a horrified look on his face. I turn around to see a woman changing her infant’s diapers on one of the tables in the eating area of the restaurant.
SO says to me “Tell me if I’m being insensitive, but shouldn’t she take the baby to the restroom, or to her car, or basically anyplace but on a table where people eat to change it?”
My reaction was yes, she should. 90% of the public bathrooms I frequent have changing tables. Most of those that don’t have a counter large enough to do such things. Regardless, it seems to me that changing a baby on a public restaurant’s table is completely inappropriate. Who knows what lurks in a baby’s diapers? Granted, she put down a blanket to change it on, but as soon as she was done, she picked up said blanket, turned it over, and folded it stinky-baby-side-down on the table.
We spent the rest of our lunch trying to decide what to do if someone sat at that table to eat their lunch. Luckily, the issue didn’t come up.
Ewww…no. Although I have to say that not every public bathroom is equiped with a changing table, and there is no way I’d put a baby on a public restroom floor, blanket or no.
I’m confused as to why she didn’t just put the blanket back into her bag (assuming this was the only place possible she could have changed the baby)? Was she using it as a table cloth? And most mothers carry wet wipes in their diaper bags, it might not kill all the germs but it would be better than nothing.
Yuck. I hope it wasn’t a poopy diaper. I’m still shaking my head over this one.
Next time, I’d go get a manager. I’m sure that has got to be some sort of health code violation.
Hygiene aside, I think that there is a certain type of person who thinks that because something is “natural” it is also, um, “make-publicable”. If someone tells them their behavior might be troubling for those around them they just shrug it off – “We all do it.” – or suggest that we ought to just get over it.
We had a lady who changed her baby’s diaper at the table during the office Christmas dinner (hint: the diaper was not just wet, if you know what I mean). Her husband, our co-worker, thought it was perfectly natural. So was our revulsion.
Sorry, I misread the part about her folding the blanket. I gotta ask, did she eat afterwards? If so, did she go and wash her hands? I’m not a germphobe or anything but the very thought of changing a diaper and then eating with those dirty hands makes my stomach churn.
Ohhh. I hate those “It’s natural, why are you so uptight” people. I hate that they assume that I can’t deal with the body’s natural functions.
I’m a GREEN for gosh’s sake! I LIVE for all that “natural” stuff!
But that doesn’t mean that I want to see a poopy diaper on my lunch table.
It also doesn’t mean that I want to see your drippy boobs hanging out of your blouse. I fully support the right of women to breast-feed in public, but that doesn’t mean you should be parading around the mall with your tits flapping in the breeze! Be discreet! I see women nursing discreetly in public all the time. Lay the baby’s blankie over yourself or something. Sheesh.
Sorry about the hijack. I just had to get that off my chest. (ba dum bump.)
Yuck, thats disgusting. There is no way she should have done that on the table. If there arent proper facilities, then change the babe in the car… Yikes, I had a major shiver go through me when I read that.
My wife works for the state health department, restaurant division, so I’m kind of a second-hand expert on this subject. Let me just say that fecal/oral contact is one of the surest ways to wind up in the hospital with diarrhea and massive dehydration.
The proper thing to do if one encounters such a situation is to find the restaurant manager and demand that the table be cleaned with bleach immediately. Then follow the offending woman out into the parking lot and whack her with a lead pipe.
I would also recommend refusing any invitations to dine at this woman’s home.
I would have whacked the lady with a lead pipe right there at the table. Some people just have no manners or tact at all. They think the world owes them whatever they desire. If she couldn’t take the child in the bathroom, she should have changed the baby in the car. This is ignorance in the truest form.
What probably happened is the same thing that happened to me yesterday when I was posting a reply to another thread. I clicked on the submit button, and after a minute or so, got an error message saying, “The document contained no data,” with the window still showing the reply box, so I clicked again, and the same thing happened. I opened another window and went to the thread, and there was my reply twice. Weird.
That is pretty gross. I had a portable changing table (Ok, it was just a folding pad, but still, it was better than using the table!). I would NEVER use it in the eating area of a restaurant!!
I personally would not change my baby’s diaper on an eating table, in a restaurant, in public, etc. That’s just bad manners!! If the restroom doesn’t have one of those changing tables (which aren’t the most sanitary thing in the world either, but definitely better than an eating table!!) I would take my baby out to the car. No one wants to look at a wet/poopy diaper when they’re trying to enjoy their meal… and the smell!! Whoo!
I would have had to say something to the manager and probably would have fired off a couple of rude comments so that the lady could hear them and know that what she was doing was disgusting the other people in the restaurant.