Jump to content

Hero Diner Owner Shouts at Noisy Toddler, Selfish Parents and Weaklings Cry Foul


Pong Messiah
 Share

Recommended Posts

And the person threatening violence is ALWAYS wrong.

If it stops somebody from harassing or otherwise harming another person or property, there is nothing wrong with a threat of violence. Or the use of reasonable force if behavior continues.

 

Threatening violence in the face of annoying screams might be something of a gray area. Gotta take age, amplitude, frequency, and duration into account; there is no one-size-fits-all response here.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest El Chalupacabra

If you replace the word "kids" with literally any other demographic of people in most of the replies in this thread, you'll see what I mean about respect.

 

Nobody here would reasonably advocate the physical assault of or total control over any entire group of people. Same with children. Kids, like every other human being, crave autonomy, respect, and compassion, but most of society believes that they should neither receive or deserve any of that.

 

Yeah. Seth and I have great kids. My son, and I assume Seth's as well, is very respectful in public and private. And, while Noah is in no way "controlled" by us, he is easily corrected. This is because we treat him with the same respect we would anyone else. Part of that respect is that we've always been aware of and attended to his needs.

 

Children throw tantrums because they need something and can't express themselves. They have no control over their lives or actions, and many parents do nothing to help them. Instead parents punish, discipline, scold, or ignore. It never occurs to most people to help their child fill the need, identify what they're feeling, and learn a better way to express themselves. And that's most definitely more work than yelling. Trevor and I have made a conscious and dedicated effort to do this. So has Seth. That's why our kids are "good".

 

If parents respected their children as people instead of viewing them as little things needing to be controlled like a puppet or trained like a show dog, I think we'd see a lot less of these incidents. But our society views children as less than, so instead it's become praise worthy to allow unstable people to berate them publicly.

This is all true, and I am NOT a parent. That said, I think it is also important to remember that children also need to learn boundaries, limits, and to learn to respect authority, as well as others. You sound like an attentive parent based on your description, so my issues are not with parents like you. Nor am I advocating treating kids like things, or to be "seen, not heard." That is obviously not healthy, either.

 

My issue is with parents who are inattentive, or literally have an attitude of "F You" to the world, and their kids can do what they want, when they want, and to hell with anyone who wants to say something to their kid, or to them. The parents in this story are exactly the type of parents I am talking about. In that situation, they should have immediately removed the kid to calm him/her down, and if that did not work, get the food to go. Or better yet, how about not be a cheap ass, and hire a baby sitter, if they want to go out for dinner?

 

Now, I am not defending someone who gets up in a baby's face and screams at the baby for making noise, but by the same token, I think when multiple customers complain, the business owner or manager has both an obligation and the right to refuse service to parents who refuse to get a handle on an unruly kid. No screaming on the part of the business owner or manager needs to happen, but they should be allowed to eject said parents for no other reason than to ensure their other customers have a good experience.

 

For example, Harkins Imax theaters have (fairly recently) instituted a zero tolerance policy on movie goers who have noisy children, cause noise themselves, or are on smart phones, and if said people don't comply, an usher will warn them. If said people still don't comply, they are asked to leave the theater. In fact, prior to each movie playing, they send a manager out to explain this policy to the audience, and most of the time, to the delight of a large part of that audience. People are sick and tired of going out and spending a lot of money and wanting to have a good time, only to have it spoiled by a few bad apples, or people who fail to discipline their bad-behaving children. And I think it is about time, past due in fact, that more businesses institute similar policies.

Here's what we did:

 

1. At home, tantrums resulted in him being put in his room until he decided to throw said tantrum, and he was ignored outside of being told he couldn't leave his room.

 

2. In public, such behavior resulted in immediate removal to our car with one of us.

 

That easy.

 

ALL KIDS throw tantrums. It's not because kid are ****ty, it's because developmentally, that's what they do because they don't have the tools to communicate or deal with emotions yet and it's frustrating. Some kids are most definitely worse than others.

 

That said, other people shouldn't have to put up with it so you remove them.

 

The former Mrs. Driver/Tank and I had a lot of solo meals while the other waited in a car. But it worked. Most times, he was excited to be at a restaurant so the threat of removal often made him chill out.

 

Such events happened every now and then for a few years, then they stopped.

 

No whacking was ever required and he's very well behaved and adjusted now. No restaurant managers ever yelled at us. Any dirty looks thrown our way were brief when they realized we were going to rectify the problem.

And this is exactly what I am saying needs to happen. I am not sure if you learned how to do this on your own (to be sure, with the help of your ex-wife, and I assume your current s/o), or if you guys researched this, but Driver you have a very thoughtful and well-planned way to raise your child, and if other people who fail to actually raise their kids to be respectful of others did half as much as you do, it would go a long way. This is very praiseworthy.

 

I was raised in a different era, and I DID get whacked, so knowing how that feels, I would never advocate that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

SUPRISE ACT THREE TWIST: Mother of beast-child sounds sane and rational....

 

That's playing dirty. The mother has no business sounding sane and rational. Doing so screws up the simplistic narrative that we all need for this incident!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, of COURSE she does! Three days after she created an internet shitstorm!

 

If there isn't video of this, nobody will ever know what really happened. I find it odd that the one thing that's being repeated with no embellishment

is the 40 minutes it took to get the damn pancakes. Everything else has been characterized in just about every varying degree possible.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And to sum up my stance;

 

One party has shown that they're reasonable after the fact, the other has acted like a denim jacket wearing, one-toothed reject from a trailer park.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And to sum up my stance;

 

One party has shown that they're reasonable after the fact, the other has acted like a denim jacket wearing, one-toothed reject from a trailer park.

why you gotta diss on denim jackets?

 

I was under the impression from the beginning that the owner was a psychopath. Or sociopath. Or both. I mean... Regardless of how bad things get in a diner/restaurant you never yell or scream or shout at a customer no matter how wrong they are. I mean.. I've litterally told someone to "f-ck off out of my shop" before.. But I didn't raise my voice and cause a scene. And it only happened the once when I was pushed to the absolute limit of my tolerance. Sometimes you can only take so much.. and hospitality has the cumulative build-up-of-petty-shit-and-annoyance-effect. Maybe this was that lady's snapping point. But judging by her Facebook comments and lack of remorse prolly not, she's just a nutter.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Crazy owner is (still) an ass, but the parents still aren't innocent here. The ability to write coherent sentences on the internet doesn't equate to good parenting. You have to read between the lines and realize they are trying to defend their parenting by appearing to be the calmer party.

 

They didn't SEE anyone glare at them, which would indicate the kid was unacceptably loud. Of course they didn't. That conveniently means the kid was only acceptably loud.

 

Just because the (crazy) owner's overreaction to the kid's decibel level was inapproptiate doesn't equate to kid being well-behaved. The fact it was raining doesn't mean the kid didn't deserve a walk to the car. The fact they waited way too long for pancakes doesn't justify bad child behavior. Just because no other patrons tried to wrap a muzzle around your kids face doesn't mean s/he is quiet. After all the owner spoke up already...enough for everyone in that (lousy) diner. How many people must get in their face before they take the kid outside? Two? Three? Wait....it was raining. That's even less incentive. How about four? Five?

 

Face it: the parents were annoyed at the diner because they waited way too long for their food. The kid started to misbehave and was called out on it...rudely. So, they used the noisy kid as a weapon to piss off the already b1tchy owner by letting the kid continue his reign of terror. This affords them some satisfaction by watching the crazy owner's face melt off in anger, while avoiding an unpleasant and rainy walk to the time-out-mobile.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Crazy owner is (still) an ass, but the parents still aren't innocent here. The ability to write coherent sentences on the internet doesn't equate to good parenting. You have to read between the lines and realize they are trying to defend their parenting by appearing to be the calmer party.

 

They didn't SEE anyone glare at them, which would indicate the kid was unacceptably loud. Of course they didn't. That conveniently means the kid was only acceptably loud.

 

Just because the (crazy) owner's overreaction to the kid's decibel level was inapproptiate doesn't equate to kid being well-behaved. The fact it was raining doesn't mean the kid didn't deserve a walk to the car. The fact they waited way too long for pancakes doesn't justify bad child behavior. Just because no other patrons tried to wrap a muzzle around your kids face doesn't mean s/he is quiet. After all the owner spoke up already...enough for everyone in that (lousy) diner. How many people must get in their face before they take the kid outside? Two? Three? Wait....it was raining. That's even less incentive. How about four? Five?

 

Face it: the parents were annoyed at the diner because they waited way too long for their food. The kid started to misbehave and was called out on it...rudely. So, they used the noisy kid as a weapon to piss off the already b1tchy owner by letting the kid continue his reign of terror. This affords them some satisfaction by watching the crazy owner's face melt off in anger, while avoiding an unpleasant and rainy walk to the time-out-mobile.

+1 post of the year contender here folks

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And besides, who cares if she is a nutter?

 

We really need to stay focused on those incompetent/evil parents who let their kids make noise, people.

True enough. There are few things more unpleasant than a wailing child in public.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Why is that though?

 

Why does a crying child anger and annoy people rather than cause them to want to care for and soothe the child like we're biologically predisposed to do? Even our cats respond to a crying baby with concern, so why not other humans? Have we really become so callous as a society?

 

Why is our society so anti-child? How did we go from "it takes a village" to "get this brat away from me"?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

First, a stranger can't approach a child, crying or not, without appearing threatening.

 

Second, only your own kid's cries elicit sympathy from you. Your kid's cries do not make me want to soothe him or her. They make me want to get away from them. Babies and toddlers have ear-piercing laughs and screams. They have no volume control, fine, but that just makes it the parents' responsibility to keep the kid quiet. No amount of high-pitched wailing is acceptable. Most people won't say anything, but it's still annoying.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Why is that though?

 

Why does a crying child anger and annoy people rather than cause them to want to care for and soothe the child like we're biologically predisposed to do? Even our cats respond to a crying baby with concern, so why not other humans? Have we really become so callous as a society?

 

Why is our society so anti-child? How did we go from "it takes a village" to "get this brat away from me"?

 

 

Are you kidding? There's not much than more aggravating than a screaming child. If the child is alone, I can have compassion but if the child is with an adult, I can't help but wonder wtf is wrong with the adult and why the adult isn't doing something about the screaming child. I have always been uber-annoyed by screaming children. This is a major reason I didn't have any.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Your incessantly crying babies cause this reaction. I don't think parents think about this because of the same reason that smokers don't realize they smell stinky to a non smoker. They live with it daily and become inured to constant noise.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.