Neither of these things bothers me much. 
Jesus would have completely had it with him by that point and smite (smote?) him.
Meh. A manager is not a hall monitor. His job is not to take sides on conflicts between adults that he has not seen and knows nothing about. Be grownup and resolve your own problems.
<claps>
It’s a kid, not the Wicked Witch of the West, he’s not going to die from a cup of water dumped on his head.
This isn’t a conflict between adults, it’s a patron disturbing other patrons. It is 100% his job to ensure that his patrons are not being unduly disturbed during their meals.
Naw,
You shoulda told him to ask his parents what a glory hole was and where could he find one.
This is one of the reasons why they don’t allow me to go into public venues with Thorazine-tipped darts and a blowgun.
Hey!
Don’t look at me like that!
It worked really really well.
Out like a light.
Story sounds odd to me too.
The response was ridiculously provocative, and could have ended up in a very stupid place.
Otara
You are my hero. I love you.
He’d have taken the high road and turned the water into wine before throwing it on the brat. 
Lurker, you really should pass this story further up the chain of management. It’s unthinkable to me that you did everything you did, and still the problem wasn’t addressed.
Absolutely agreed. This wasn’t a case of “he said / she said”, at least not until after the manager ignored the situation and it escalated to the water-dumping. It sounds more like it’s a manager who didn’t want to deal with the situation, and hoped it would just go away on its own.
See, why aren’t there more people like this? Who put forethought into it? Who either 1) bring an extra person to remove them if they get rowdy or 2) actually get up and leave if the kids act up (I was a product of #2 and damned if I didn’t learn quickly).
Sigh. Unfortunately, for pair of kids like Voyager’s there are 5 like the OP’s situation.
It’s the only parenting he’s gonna get in life.
I love the water treatment. If I’d been there and witnessed what you went through I would have loudly asked for a show of hands of anybody who thought the kids were out of control. If either parents gave me any lip I would point out that they ruined the meals of everybody with their hands up and invite them to pay for their meals.
I remember when I worked in retail people were always coming up to me trying to get me to mediate their conflicts about who was cutting in line. I’m sorry. your ass is 45 years old. If a bunch of adults can’t figure out how to stand in a line, that is soooooo not my problem. I’ve got a job to do, I don’t know any of y’all, and I have no idea who is right and who is wrong because I didn’t see any of this. In a dispute between two customers, I have absolutely no basis to choose one side over the other. And at this point in your life, if you don’t have the balls to say “Excuse me, I think the line starts over there” and you also don’t have the patience to suck up the consequences of your ball-less-ness, well I don’t know what to tell you but your inability to handle kindergarten curriculum is not my problem and I’m not going to get behind on my work because you want to run up to me like a sissy eight year old.
Sheesh.
The manager did not see what happened. He has no way of knowing if the kids were being little angels and you are just a crazy grumpy person who walks around making people’s lives miserable. Anyone in customer services sees tons of insane unreasonable people. He doesn’t know, off the bat, which on of you guys is right. So how can you expect him to take sides?
If anything, the manager would probably take their side. If you are going to lose a customer, it’s better to lose a solo customer than a family. Business is business.
According to the waitress, I was the third person who complained about them.
Pro tip: If he actually gets off his goddamn ass and comes out to the floor, he can actually physically see the little shit running around screaming and slamming into stuff, at which point deciding who’s right and taking sides becomes a pretty straightforward process.
I suspect that is precisely why he was lurking in his office–so he wouldn’t see this and have to deal with the issue.
even sven, I like you as a poster, but you’re way off here. This was not a conflict between adults. At least it did not begin as anything of the kind, and it never would have reached that point if the manager had been doing his job. These people–the parents–were behaving grossly inappropriately in a restaurant dining room. Neither Lurker nor other patrons have any reasonable way to address this other than a word to the offenders (ineffective) or calling upon the staff. Calling upon the staff is what people do to avoid a confrontation in such circumstances.
Managing the atmosphere of a restaurant dining room most certainly is the restaurant manager’s job. It is especially so in this case, because this manager has directed the wait staff not to act on such issues but to refer complaints to him. Surely by the second complaint, if not the first, the manager should have emerged to assess the situation. The nature of the disruption was apparently evident to everyone in the area; he should have been able to act on it before Lurker’s booth was invaded, before the coffee spill and the jelly hands, before the dousing that finally aroused the parents and finally drew the manager.
Yes. In the circumstances, this is evidence of his failure of responsibility, not an excuse for it.
Lurker, I won’t criticize any of your decisions about what to do and not do at the time. It was an outrageous situation.
But I think you were abused by restaurant management, as well as by the wild family, and someone above that manager’s head should hear about this.
I think you should ask an owner or higher-ranked manager to (1) reimburse you the cost of your meal, plus $X for cleaning coffee/jelly/whatever off your clothes (i.e., don’t make it sound like you’ll be happy with a coupon for next time), and (2) write back to confirm that he has addressed the matter with the restaurant manager (i.e., don’t ask for an apology, ask for corrective action). The key point is the manager’s inattention to circumstances in the dining room which were the subject of multiple complaints. That’s the professional failure which the company should make amends for.
Document the whole affair, including your complaint and its resolution whichever way, to a restaurant review site. At the very least, this will strike a blow for decent behavior and managerial oversight in other restaurants, because the popular restaurant review sites are read both by many of the people who will be dining around you next time, and by many of the people who run the restaurants.
Unless I’m misunderstanding, you did those things sort of passively. I mean, the waitress and the manager, obviously, didn’t give a shit about it. Certainly not excusable, but I’m not really surprised.
Saying things out loud, but not directly confronting the parents, is where this whole situation is a problem for me.
I get being pissed and trying to enjoy breakfast and all that, but why didn’t you say to the adults there, “Get your fucking kid under control?” As a directly engaging question, not just throwing it out there hoping they respond.
Asking a 9 year old who is running around like that to stop got you the exactly result you should have expected; nothing.
I know it wasn’t hot coffee(since doing that would’ve been a psycho move), I know he wasn’t the Wicked Witch of the West, and all that happy crappy; but it was a kid.
Which, apparently to me and like one other person; is a pretty odd thing to do to a kid.
I realize the kid was a little tyrant and all but somehow I’m pretty sure a man in the same scenario wouldn’t get away with tossing a glass full of water on a strangers kid in that situation or in this thread for the matter.