You may be surprised to hear this, but nobody has to justify their body size to a stranger. Ever. Whether they’re fat or thin, lazy or active. Who gives a shite?
My mom weighed over 250 pounds after her 2nd (very, very rough) pregnancy and still was very active with me and my slightly-younger sister (“Irish twins”) as kids. We weren’t little uncontrolled hellions, she would have spanked our butts like we deserved if we’d acted like flaming childcars in a restaurant.
fuck’s sake
Yeah, if an adult did that to me I probally would’ve grabed one the knives and stabbed him or smashed a glass against him. The parents should be glad all that happened to their brat was he got a little wet.
We had to put up with that BS a couple months ago when daHubby and I went to a steakhouse. Between the feral children and the table full of completely blotzo, foul-mouthed idiots that were sitting right near us, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to curl up under the table and cry, or grab the manager and have everyone thrown out.
How bloody hard is it to teach kids manners? You teach a puppy not to puddle on the carpet, why can’t you teach a child to behave in public?
My sister will wait for a kid who is running wild in public to be away from the parent, and then she will look the kid in the eye and in a low voice say, “hey kid, shutup.” Usually, the kid’s eyes get as big as sauces and s/he goes and stands next to his parents, too afraid to do anything else. God, I love my sister.
I would have laughed my ass off if I’d witnessed the OP. God knows how many times I’ve been tempted to do the exact same thing.
My mom is perfect at quelling kids with a mere look, but she’s been a teacher for 30 years, so she’s had a lot of practice.
My wife’s been teaching for 20 years; she has the same ability. We call the look “Teacher Face”: :mad:
Much as I empathize with the OP’s situation, I think it could have been handled far better. I would have moved elsewhere or left, or even got up and left the restaurant without paying. I’d be only too happy to explain to the manager why.
I think it’s extremely poor form to douse a kid, especially not your kid, with water. The story ends up fine, but what if the kid slipped and fell? The parents seem fairly unreasonable, so you may have earned yourself an ass kicking or worse.
I’m irked by badly behaved youngsters too, but I think avoidance is best.
Parent, and grandparent here. I adore this! My own darling little grandkid had a wee bit of the “pwecious snowfwake” upbringing until they moved in with me. Grandkid is learning some manners, and my own pwecious snowfwake (who was NOT raised that way) is learning that it won’t crush their tiny spirits into oblivion if you make them mind their manners.
I myself was applauded by a group of fellow customers when I hauled my son (then threeish, now 19) out of a public place after he started having a major meltdown. Osh kosh b’gosh’s are Awesome, those shoulder straps make the kid into a veritable toddler totebag! 
He would probably have fallen sooner or later anyways.
even sven, would I pour water on adult? If they were acting the same way, hell yeah.
What if the kid collided with a waitress and got hot coffee spilled all over him? Lurker may have saved his pwecious little life. And I doubt there was much chance of him slipping on the water considering he was in her booth.
My kid does have AS, but I promise you he did not behave like that and I would not allow him to behave like that. Gah. Fuck using AS as an excuse.
Also, use of water in this instance = hilarious!
I agree you shouldn’t have thrown water in the child’s face, but where are you going to get a cup of acid at a Denny’s?
I have poured drinks on men portuning me who would not take no for an answer, I have pushed them away physically when they laid hands on me, I have punched them out for touching me more intimately and I have kneecapped them with steel toed shoes for a full on grope.
Water on a sprog is nothing.
Pffft I’ll tell you what you did wrong. Water is NOT what you use for a car fire. You use a fire extinguisher.
You order the coffee! Oh wait…
You don’t see it much - people pulling their kids out. It honestly happened TWICE in the four years I had kids the age prone to it - and that seems pretty normal for normal families I know.
Now, the two times I did it it WAS highly disruptive to the other diners. Sorry about that. There is really no way to pull a misbehaving child through a restaurant without exposing everyone in the restaurant to the misbehavior. And so most parents don’t do it if the discipline will cause an escalation and disturb more people - you have to get to DefCon 4 before removing them is appropriate. Which, at that point, is at least screaming at the top of their lungs. Unfortunately for the other diners, taping your kids mouth with duct tape and twist tying their arms and legs to remove them from a restaurant is seen as abuse by CPS.
And people have different opinions. I’d rather put up with misbehaving kids myself than someone yelling at a TV. And I HATE adults who use profanity in public.
The difference, of course, is that any liability for injury would not be the OP’s.
And I have a hard time believing that so many people would douse a child, or an adult, if they were in the same situation. What’s so hard about going somewhere else?
I’m almost forty, have been in numerous scuffles and altercations, but I can’t ever recall dousing someone, child or adult, with water (unless we’re counting a day at the beach or something).
Again, the kid and the parents were obnoxious. But I put the responsibility primarily on the parents. If a dousee was deserving it would be them, and I certainly don’t advise getting into fights with people with a disregard for societal rules and convention. It just doesn’t seem worth the risk when there’s other places to buy coffee, read a paper, etc.
The business didn’t learn anything from this because they still got the OP’s money. If a number of customers left after these people showed up that would reinforce the idea.
Something other than sit in his office ignoring the disturbance in his restaurant, after telling the staff that they are not allowed to deal with disturbances. When you take the job of manager, this is part of the job, dealing with problems. At a minimum, he could act as a buffer, or an additional calm adult figure to help keep the kids in line while the parents get their act together.
Yup. And usually they consider seeing the movie that is the most inappropriate film for kids that they can find. And then they bring their kids. Therefore, fucking it up for everyone trying to watch it like a normal, considerate human.
Why? Why do they do this? Not out of pure malevolent spite, I think. They are not clever enough for that. Nope, it’s merely out of utter cluelessness. Thus, their spawn grow up the same way, with the same lack of manners–no, lack of common sense-- and at best, they gather intense scorn wherever they go; at worst, they get multiple boots kick up their multiple asses. Multiple times.
And the beat goes on.
Oh! yeah… and they vote, too!
We ARE fucked.
Actually yours would be a better made-up story because it’s got that hint of realism going for it. It could have been made up. I’ve lived through several events like this, with details so bizarre they do almost sound made up.
And now I’ll be the jerk and say I think what you did was wrong. It didn’t diffuse the situation, you still suffered through a miserable meal, and your retaliation was revenge toward the child when it should have been the parents. And you still had to pay for your miserable meal. Sadly there probably would have been no satisfying workable response.
But it made for an awesome story!
If the manager is telling the staff that they cannot do anything about a problem, but the manager himself is hiding in the office, that’s not good management. The problem is NOT being dealt with. Either the manager needs to allow his staff to take care of most ordinary problems (and kids acting up in public is a very ordinary problem) or he needs to step up and deal with problems himself.
I go out to Sunday lunch with a friend at least every other week. There are quite a few restaurants that we no longer go to because of kids running around loose. Now, having kids acting up in a restaurant can happen in almost any eatery, but if it happens a lot, then the staff and/or management are not controlling the environment.