What Would You Do If You Were Treated This Way?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I vascillated on where to post this, so mods, if this is more a MPSIMS or Great Debate or even Pit thread, do your moving magic.

Anyway…

Mr. tlw has a co-worker, we’ll call her Shelley, who was to be married last September. September 15th to be exact. Her fiance? A NYC Firefighter. After 9/11, (fortunately he was not at the WTC) the wedding was postponed, and ultimately rescheduled for today. Mr. tlw and I were invited.

At the time of the original invitation, I wasn’t even pregnant yet. Now I have a new baby. When we got the invitation to the rescheduled wedding, the reception card clearly stated “No children under ten, please.” (This was a change from the first invite, which had no such demand.) Mr. tlw mentioned to Shelley how sorry we were that we wouldn’t be able to come to the wedding now, since we aren’t going anywhere without Baby tlw. “Oh!” Shelley exclaimed. “Don’t you dare let Baby tlw keep you at home! Please come. I just don’t want little ones running around causing a disturbance. She’s a babe in arms. It’ll be fine.”

Okay, sounds good, personal reassurances from the bride herself. We planned to attend.

Fast forward to today. Mr. tlw and I get ready for what is to be an extremely formal high church morning wedding in a huge Catholic church out on Long Island. (Not quite a cathedral, but biiiiiiiig.) I put on this fabulous outfit that I bought last summer (pre-baby) but never wore. I was thrilled that I could fit into it. I even wore a matching hat. Mr. tlw wore a great suit and an absolutely gorgeous new tie and looked like a million bucks. Baby tlw was even geared up in a pretty pink dress with matching socks and sunbonnet. My child has style, even at her young age.

We drove over out to the church, and I stayed in the car and changed and nursed the baby so as to improve the chances that she’d sleep or at least stay quiet throughout the ceremony. Mr. tlw went off to chat with some of his coworkers. I joined him, and we went into the church. I stopped to adjust the baby’s placement in her sling, so Mr. tlw entered into the sanctuary a few steps ahead of me.

An usher had already asked Mr. tlw “Bride or Groom?” as is customary. “Bride.” he answered, just as I stepped up to his side. The usher saw me and our daughter and scowled. “Oh, a baby.” He even tsked at us. He proceeded to seat us in the third row of the second section of pews, behind the cross aisle that intersected the main center aisle midway through the church.

The front section of the church wasn’t full. We weren’t near anyone. We were perplexed for a few minutes, then just flat out embarassed as other co-workers of Mr. tlw were ushered past us, to seats in the front section of pews. People kept coming in and no one was seated anywhere near us. We’d effectively been made pariahs by the scowling usher.

Now we were getting angry, and couldn’t help but notice that we were the only minorities present in the room, even amongst the two dozen or so of Mr. tlw and Shelley’s co-workers who were invited. Finally we saw the usher leading a lady toward our area of seating, but then we realized that it was because she was the companion of a man in a motorized wheelchair. They were in (and next to) our row, but across the aisle. We tried to get the attention of another usher to say something, but before we could, the organ began to play and the ushers all scampered off to their places in the processional. It was now clear that we had been placed in the “people with babies, handicaps and/or undesirable skin colors” section and we weren’t going to get a chance to move.

We watched, disbelieving, as the processional occured in front of us as the bridal party entered from opposite sides of the sanctuary via the intersecting aisle, before turning and approaching the altar via the center aisle through the front section of pews, where we weren’t sitting. We got to see the side view of half of the bridal party, and then their backs.

The church was stifling, even though it is only in the low 80s here today. There seemed to be no modernities in the church save the blazing lights. There were no fans, no air conditioning, and also no microphones. The ceremony was completely unamplified, so at our great distance from the altar, we couldn’t hear a thing. We found ourselves sitting there, uncomfortable, upset, and in the middle of a lengthy Nuptual Mass that we couldn’t even follow. The man in the wheelchair and his companion started whispering about leaving, but the companion voted against it since the wheelchair would make so much noise. They ultimately chose to grin and bear it. Mr. tlw and I decided to take our leave early, grab something cold to drink, and beat the crowd over to the reception.

Once again, I stayed in the (air conditioned) car with the baby (who slept) for as long as I could, then enetered the reception hall with Mr. tlw just in time for the receiving line. Shelley greeted us enthusiastically: “Oh, I’m so glad you came. And look at your baby, she’s so beautiful!” We figured that maybe the seating issues at the church had been just one rogue usher acting out on us.

Then we got inside and found the Shelley had arranged for us to be seated in the furthest, darkest corner of the reception hall, just the three of us, at a small table for four - about the size of a card table. There were other such tables in the other corners, one for gifts, one with the wishing well for cards, and one with the guest book. We’d been exiled yet again. It made the likelyhood of our rogue usher theories plummet. This was no coincidence.

The bile rose in my throat, and I took off my hat and so as to draw the least amount of attention to us back in our niche, which was just far enough from the other tables as to make us stand out as at the party, but clearly not a part of it.

We stayed for the crappy meal only because Mr. tlw is diabetic, and needed to get some food into his system. As soon as we ate, we hightailed it out of there.

Mr. tlw is going to have to see this woman a week from Monday when she returns from her honeymoon. He wants, terribly, to corner her and tell her what a nasty, rotten thing it was to do to us. I told him that he shouldn’t because she’s his subordinate, and he didn’t want this personal issue to cause professional problems, especially if he has to give her a bad review next month, which is a distinct possibility. She’s a sales engineer and probably won’t meet her performance goals. I say he should just let it go, and she’ll get hers one day.

What would you do?

2

I would try to ask her about it nonconfrontationally. It is possible that she was actually trying to be considerate by sitting you where she thought the baby wouldn’t be as likely to be upset by the loud noises. I’m not sure exactly how you would go about finding this out tactfully, so I’ll leave the script to others. But I wouldn’t let there be a rift in your friendship until you are sure you have been insulted and not merely experienced an ugly misunderstanding.

Then, if her answers make it clear that you were insulted “Oh, my, with all us Javanese filling the room, we just thought you’d be more comfortable with a table of your own, since there weren’t any of your kind we could seat you with” you can figure out how to react.

3

Submit to www.etiquettehell.com at LEAST!
Oh, and cathedrals aren’t just big churches-they are churches that a bishop presides over.

4

He is her boss and you are wondering when she is gonna get hers?

Bawahahahahhaa

Tghere is ‘doubt’ about what the deal was?

Bawahahahaha

The ushers were on their own? Is that how it works in the office there? The boss is not responsible for the workers?

Bawahahahaha

Not to worry, the ‘day’ is very near to hand. :smiley:

5

Thanks, Guin, for the clarification on the definition of cathedral. All I know is that the church was damned huge, especially by Manhattan standards. Or by rural Mississippi standards – you could the church I attended as a kid into that building eight times over, with room to spare.

GusNSpot my husband is ethical. He cannot allow Shelley’s appalling treatment of us at a personal event have any bearing on his review of her performance of as an employee. In fact, he’s considering giving the hard numbers to his boss and letting him do her review just so there is no question of fairness. Unlike that nasty cow, my husband is considerate like that.

Now, off to Ettiquette Hell I go!

6

Don’t assume the pew seating arrangements were made by the bride or were pre-planned to segregate you because of race. If I was an usher and someone came in with a baby to a reception that I was thinking was baby free, I might well make a spur of the moment decision to place them in a section not hemmed in by other attendees where they could get in and out easily, and at some distance from the front if the baby started crying. I would also place people in wheelchairs in a section where they could get out easily and were not hemmed in.

I would not place a person with a baby near the front if at all possible. I have been to enough formal weddings to know that babies and very young children in the audience are often highly disruptive. I would try to get the baby as far away as possible from noise that would disturb it and potentially make it cry. She probably had 1000 other things spinning around her head at that time and the seating choices of a cautious usher (who was obviously not clued in you were coming) are not her direct responsibility.
“What would you do”

You need to get off your high horse. You are going to great lengths to construct a tale of incredible incovenience and deliberate disrespect with all the little details you add in (the AC in the church was bad, the air was too hot, the sound was bad, the center pew was for “minorities” etc) . You are winding yourself into high dudgeon of outrage when you obviously don’t have all the facts surrounding the decisions about seating arrangements. You were not pregnant when the invitation was originally extended and she did not have the proviso on the original invitation. Circumstances change. The first wedding’s plans have nothing to do with the second one. Your refusal to attend sans baby for the afternoon puts the bride in a diffficult situation and she tried to be gracious.

New parents (and especially mommies) are often emotionally sensitive and somewhat socially clueless as to their expectations for how people with babies should or will be treated in formal situations. You really should have stayed home if you thought that you were going to be seated in the thick of the action while holding a new baby. It was the brides day not your day to be deferred to and I think this is what is at the center of your resentment.

Don’t assume all the reception seating arrangments were made personally by the bride or that they were made with respect to your race. If I were making seating plans I would probably place people carrying babies as far as I could away from the front and off the main floor. You keep trying to throw down the race card in this scenario when I think you should be trying to throw down the little baby card. If you were non-family, non-minority people with a little baby I suspect your “treatment” would been identical

7

I concur with astro. Would it be terribly impossible for you to arrange to have somebody look after the baby for the day? If nothing else just out of respect for the wishes of the bride?

Since you had to go with the baby where plans had been made without considering babies, special arrangements would have to be made for you, so as to minimise possible disruptions.

8

I don’t think it was so much the baby as it was seating someone with a disability so far away-that was rather inconsiderate!

9

This was the feeling I had reading your missive as well.

As a white male there is no way for me to empathize with your plight as a minority, and the countless slights that you get in a day, but understand that a perceived slight is not neccesarily an intended slight, and often not related to your race at all.

[hijack and personal anecdote]
Reminds me of the time I was working at a diner as a busboy and I had the task of seating customers during a slow afternoon. The diner was split into about 4 zones with a with a waitperson assigned to each zone. An African American gentleman with his Caucasian wife stroll in and I begin to seat them in the only section without a seated customer (to give that watiperson the benefit of the new business).

As I begin to walk the couple to the booth I hear over my shoulder. “I WILL NOT STAND FOR THIS!!!” I quickly turn to see what could have happened to invoke such ire. “You will not seat my wife and me in the back of the restaurant. I will bring this up with your manager and I refuse to eat here ever again.”

I began an attempt at explaining that I was trying to give the waitperson the business but he refused to listen. It was obviously a ‘racial issue’.
[/hijack and personal anecdote]

10

As much of a cynic as I am, I have to believe it’s a misunderstanding. After all, who in their right mind invites their boss to their wedding and intentionally mistreats them?

11

Yeah, I’m thinking misunderstanding, too. If there had been an intentional attempt by not only the usher but the bride and groom to slight you, the bride would not have been so kind and friendly to you – both by telling you to come with the baby, and then by gushing over you when she saw you.

It seems to me that an at least plausible explanation is that you were seated where it would be convenient to leave with the baby, with a minimum of inconvenience or attention, should the baby start fussing. I’m astonished to hear you construe that as “being seated in the people with babies/handicapped/people of color section.” Wow. It’s hard to imagine of how you could possibly think less of a person one would have thought you at least liked, seeing as how you attended her wedding.

12

Let it ride. If a slight was intended, you wouldn’t have been invited in the first place.

The smart money is on never accepting any wedding invitations for other than immediate family and close friends, and even then remembering that the day is for them, not you.

13

First of all, the usher sat us at the wedding, not the reception. Furthermore, the usher sat us in a completely different section of the church than every other attendee, save the handicapped man and his companion. If we were placed in the back of the same section, I might consider it to be okay. But we were placed some twenty yards from everyone else there.

That’s why I gave the bride the benefit of the doubt until the same thing happened at the reception. The usher may have been acting on his own, however misguided he was, at the wedding. But the bride and her mother made the seating arrangements for the reception. Mr. tlw heard her talking at work about the difficulty she was having with making seating arrangements so that her mother and father, who are divorced, and their respective sides of the family, were sufficiently separated. She and her mother chose the place for every person who attended the reception. They stuck us at a tiny table, not meant for people to eat at (if the use of the other similar tables is any indication) in a dark, remote corner, away from all of Mr. tlw other’s coworkers and everybody else at the event.

My husband, child and I were treated like crap, and I need to get off of my high horse? I don’t have all the facts? I have these facts: only people were seen as inconvenient were placed so far away from the ceremony that they may as well have not even been there. Five people out of two hundred and fifty were segregated away from the entirety of the party at both the ceremony and the reception. The handicapped man and his guest could have been placed anywhere in the sanctuary – it didn’t matter to him, he wasn’t sitting in a pew anyway. He could come and go as he pleased, he chose not to only because of the noise involved. We could have been placed anywhere with easy access to the aisle so that I could take Baby tlw out of the sanctuary if she started to fuss excessively. Instead, we were so far away that we couldn’t hear the officiating priest.

Did you read the OP carefully? I know it was long, but you could’ve bothered paying attention before you start casting aspersions our way. We weren’t going to go to the wedding because of the late-added no child proviso. When we told the bride that we were staying home with our baby, she was the one who said that it wouldn’t be any problem to bring her. *If she was in a “difficult situation” she put herself there. When Mr. tlw said “We’re not coming, since we can’t bring the baby.” she could’ve said “Oh, well, I’m sorry to hear that. You won’t consider getting a sitter?” “No, that won’t work. Sorry.” “Well, we’ll miss you.” She was not in any way bound to say that it would be okay, to explain the intent of her “no child” rule, or any of the things that she did. By saying “Oh, bring her, it’s okay” she made us believe that it was, indeed, okay with her and that we were welcome. We clearly were not.

Oh, so now I’m just hormonal and emotional, and I should have expected to be segregated and exiled, because that’s how people treat parents?

No, the center of my resentment is being seated outside of the action. I wouldn’t have minded being on the fringe, or the margin. I do mind being so far away I may as well have not been there at all. We went with the intention of celebrating a happy occasion with the people there, not watching while everyone else celebrated.

We aren’t assuming, we already know who made the arrangements. And the race thing is probably an unhappy coincidence, but it’s hard to know. Pushing us away from the rest of the attendees when we were the only black people there was certainly not a good idea if she didn’t want us to wonder if that wasn’t an additional motivation for her decision(s).

And it would’ve been identically rude, and wrong.

Point being – if she really didn’t want us there, she shouldn’t have invited us, and she shouldn’t have made an overt indication to Mr. tlw that we were welcome, with our baby, when we really were not.

We weren’t going to attend the wedding at all, because yes, it would have been terribly impossible for anyone to watch the baby for the six or seven hours involved in a long church wedding and reception, plus the 90 minutes drive time round-trip. Not only has she never been separated from us both, (she’s only eight weeks old) I’m breastfeeding, which happens every few hours. And before you ask, no, I was not going to go to the length of pumping and preparing bottles to go to a wedding. (We don’t give her bottles, anyway.) If Shelley hadn’t specifically stated that her wish was for us to attend with Baby tlw, we wouldn’t have been there.

Clearly, there were plans made with consideration of our baby. I simply call into question whether a full section buffer zone at the church and a ten to fifteen foor buffer zone at the reception was really necessary in order to “minimize possible disruptions.”

14

At this point, I’m not sure why you’re interested in hearing what other people would do. It seems that the consensus is that what other people would do is assume that there was no intentional effort made to treat you and your family “like crap.” But since that is clearly what you believe happened, why do you care what the rest of us think?

15

Way too wound.

16

I’m not, because clearly the only people who are interested in posting are people who would’ve done the same thing as the bitchy bride. I was hoping to hear from people who were thoughtful and didn’t agree with treating people badly because they happened to have a baby with them. I clearly expected too much.

17

Wow, you’ve really gone off the deep end. With a thread title like this one, you should expect people to share their opinions. Shouldn’t the fact that no one here agrees with you tip you off to something? Based on what you said, you are way out of line calling this woman bitchy. I see no reason to think she intended to slight you in any way.

18

Excuse me? Where did I say I would do the same thing? Where did I agree “with treating people badly”? You think anyone who disagrees with you is by definition not thoughtful?

If this thread is an example of the paranoia and unnecessary affront with which you greet those who act other than precisely how you expect them to act, then you can expect to be continually insulted as you move through life. And good luck with that.

19

predicting a lock

20

Welcome to the wonderful world of parenthood.

I’ve been through exactly the situation you describe (minus the minority thing). The only thing different is that my wife and I exiled ourselves to the back pews of the church. I knew from past experience that a caterwauling baby can be a major irritant to most people, especially during solemn cermonies such as weddings. And it isn’t just the noise. There’s also projectile vomiting and dirty diapers that can ruin another person’s enjoyment (and “the fringe” just isn’t far enough away to keep the stink of baby poo at bay). Perhaps the usher was thinking more of your baby if he saw that Baby tlw was sleeping and didn’t want organ noise or a priest’s intonations to disturb your infant.

We relegated ourselves to an out of the way corner at the reception as well. If the baby falls asleep again (and 8 week old babies do that at the drop of a hat) you surely don’t want to be in the middle of a noisesome crowd trying to bustle and jostle their way around your kid. The stinky diaper comes into play here as well.

I think astro is pretty well on the mark about what was going on behind the scenes. Sure, the bride-to-be could have said “No, you can’t come to our function because you have a baby” but I’ve never been told this bluntly to my face. She may have wanted to leave it up to your discretion as to whether you thought the baby would be disruptive or bothered by the heat/lights/crowd/noise.

Deal with it. You are all about your baby but she was all about her wedding and trying to make the most amount of people comfortable. Different priorities, different perceptions. No sympathy from me but some empathy.

And I must say that unless you were seated at a coffee table or end table that I have most definitely been able to eat from something “about the size of a card table”. No foul there.