In this thread, a little discussion ensued about one poster who asked that said dangerous fans be turned off when she was in a restaurant in Taiwan.
I don’t want to be one of those “Kids should just deal” types…but it does seem a bit excessive sometimes. But when is it acceptable to ask someone to change the environment for your kid/kids in general? It seems like the default should be to remove the child when possible–like, no toddlers in the kitchen of a restaurant and so on. Is it ever okay to do what the poster in question did?
My position would be that people who want to protect children from dangers which they might encounter when reasonably unsupervised (e.g., home alone after school) have every right to ask for that.
IMHO, it’s the people who want to make the world child-proof so that they don’t have to pay attention to their own child when they are supposed to be who are asking too much. You made it, supervise it. I see it all as going hand-in-hand with the replacement of “child-raising” with “parenting.” The former term connotes that one is engaged in the fifteen-to-twenty-year-long activity making a child into an adult, which means actively teaching them what dangers there are in the world and how to avoid them. The latter term connotes a relatively permanent state of superiority over a child, which leads to infantalizing them until you kick them out of the house, then being astonished that they can’t fend for themselves.
Its part of the general “health and safety” debate. There is a middle ground somewhere between Victorian child labor and our current “cotton wool” culture. IMO its a private business, the most the owner in the OP should be required to do is put up a warning sign (I know they are over-used in modern society but they do have their place).
Of course what would stop something like that happening in the US is probably the fact that warning sign or not, they could get sued when some kid broke their fingers in it. I don’t see how you would stop that from happening, without a blanket “you can’t sue for anything that happens to you in a private business” law.
Parents should supervise their kids. Those offering services to the public should remove reasonably foreseeable dangers, except where those dangers are a necessary part of the services they are offering.
The controversy is over what constitutes “reasonably foreseeable danger” and what is an unreasonable unforeseeable one. And what is “necessary the service they are offering” means. The restaurant in the OP (I assume, I didn’t actually read the original thread, or know if Taiwan was ever anyone’s colony) offers an old timey colonial era ambiance, surely an old timey colonial era fan is part of that ?
Additionally as I point out that kind of sensible common sense “is this an unnesscary unreasonable risk for my customers” is NOT what mordern US businesses consider. Instead its “what can I get sued over successfully” and more importantly “what does my insurance company mandate”.
I don’t seem to have trouble keeping our 3-year-old at the table when we’re in a restaurant.
But…
Having said that, let me be the likely devil’s advocate; if the fans in question were heavy and sharp, and the blades were not guarded, they should not be on the floor at all. A fan as described in the OP is an unnecessary hazard to children AND adults. If you put up a fan like that in my office it’d immdiately be taken down by the safety committee as a completely unnecessary hazard. So why should it be in THAT workplace?
I tend to lean, strongly, towards health and safety, and to be quite frank I think people can be very pig-headed about this issue. If there’s a good reason to have something dangerous around, you guard it. If there isn’t, you get rid of it. Sharp whirling blades are a goddamned stupid thing to have somewhere people can be hurt by them - it doesn’t have to be a kid. It could be a waitress stumbling, a customer not looking where he’s going, someone bumping into someone. I know the response will be “well people should be careful.” Yeah, they should - by removing the hazard. This is Murphy’s Law, engineering 101, basic safety; if you make the accident impossible then it won’t happen.
Maybe sometimes but in the thread in question, no. As a business owner you should be allowed to decorate your place as you see fit (within codes). If you as a parent deem this environment dangerous to your can’t-keep-their-fingers-out-places-they-don’t-belong kids, don’t take them in to those places.
In the linked thread, that situation was ridiculous. I grew up with those fans and have stopped the blades many times with zero injuries. We even used to see who could stop the fan the quickest by shoving our fingers in at speed.
Okay, so let’s take this one step further: if the restaurant is swelteringly, unbearably hot without the dangerous fans and the owner does not have the capital to buy fans that the safety committee would approve or install air conditioning, what then? Should he just close his doors and find another line of work in the name of “health and safety”?
Sometimes you have to make due with what you have.
Insufficient data. I looked at that thread, and there was a person saying that, in her opinion, it was hazardous. Others chimed in to say it wasn’t, and that she had “entitlement issues”.
My opinion? Can’t say, unless we can inspect the fan in question. If it is actually dangerous, they yes it is perfectly proper to point out the fact to the manager.
I’m not sure if you’re questioning the premise of my hypothetical (that the owner doesn’t have any money to buy replacements now) because he must have had money at one time if he bought expensive fans or because he could sell the presumably valuable antiques and thereby raise the money he would need or if I’m missing the point of your question altogether.
Your own hypothetical. We can argue about WHY he can’t purchase a fan that a safety commission would approve, however, I don’t see that as a legit excuse.
I was just offering my OWN hypothetical – such fans are usually older, possibly something you would purchase as antiques.
Possibly the example in the OP is not the best one for making the point. Its clearly a bit of a border-line case. IMO its hard to say which side of the line this case it on, without knowing how deadly the fan is, and how integral to the ambiance, business model, history, etc. of the restaurant(what if its the last working model of a long dead Victorian fan manufacturer, and they have billboards all over town saying come see “See the historic death fan at Mr Chows!”?).
How about this for an example of how IMO we have gone way too far in this direction…
When I brought my house recently I was applying for insurance (which I HAD to get or would not have been issued a mortgage). And the first question the company asked was (and this is a COMPLETELY true story) “Do you have any trampolines”.
This really irritated (and mildly amused) me. IMO the point of owning a house is I can whatever I damn well please in that house. If I want to have trampolines surrounded by razor wire and viper pits, its my own business, as long as they are safely away from public thorough-fares, and I have a big warning sign on my front door to warn potential guests (which I suspect I would not get many of ).
Yet here was an insurance company saying effectively “We won’t let you have trampolines in your house”. I mean I don’t actually know what would have happened if I said “yes”, but I can only assume it would not have been good. There is no free-market choice involved here, I HAVE to have the insurance or I don’t get the house (and I’m pretty sure most insurance companies have fairly similar policies). That to me is ridiculous.
Probably what would happen is that your premium would be increased slightly to reflect the increased risk of owning a trampoline.
When I bought house insurance, there was a whole list of such questions (“do you have any knob and tube wiring”? We did - but only a minor amout; “do you have a swimming pool”? No). All this info went into some big formula which spat out how much they would charge.
Don’t see that as a very good example of a protective society gone amuck - being required to pay for the actual risks you assume.
It cannot be the case that trampoline-ownership disentitles you to insurance, and all companies insist on this, or no-one would be able to own them.
You didn’t say, so forgive me: did actually they say they wouldn’t issue you insurance if you had trampolines (“saying effectively ‘We won’t let you have trampolines in your house’” suggests this strongly) or would your rates simply have been higher?
I’m not so sure. There are certainly things that insurance companies will not cover, such as diving boards in swimming pools, or pools without a surrounding fence.
To me that is ridiculous. That a private citizen can be effectively banned from having something in his private residence. I can’t get mortgage without insurance, and I cannot insurance if I have X. That is effectively the same as a saying “the government says X is illegal in private dwellings”.
As I said I’m not actually sure what would have happened if I’d said yes. But i do know there are certain things they will simply not insure, whether trampolines are included I’m not sure. Though if it would have made my insurance prohibitively expensive they amount to the same thing.
Yeah, but this ain’t your workplace. The WWE and other entertainment operations routinely set off fireworks in enclosed arenas, which is obviously a fire hazard. Are you going to go pull Vince McMahon aside when you walk into the Staples Center and let him know you disapprove? Because I’m pretty sure he knows what he’s doing and wants to create a certain atmosphere for his paying customers.
I’m not as fussed over the absurdity as you - if someone wishes to do something they know to be hazardous and desires to buy insurance, why should their premiums not reflect the hazard?
They can do it if they can afford to cover the risk.
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