Horror Stories from my Coffee Shop - Chapter the Fourth

As many of you know (although few of you likely particularly care, as you're likely relatively unaffected by it), the City of Edmonton went non-smoking in July of '05. And, in fact, I must admit that even as a smoker, I do rather like being able to walk into a bar and see all the way to the other side of it. However, I disagree with the entire method by which the City accomlished this phenomenon. But that's neither here nor there.

When the City went smoke free, we at the Shop were obliged to follow (much to my employer's chagrin) but it did open up an opportunity we hadn't had for a few years, since phase I of the smoking bylaw had come into effect: we could now allow minors into the Shop. My boss was cautiously optimistic about this - we do have computers with online gaming, so he hoped that we might attract a younger clientele (who, he hoped as fervently, wouldn't vandalize the place, infect the network with a virus from their nexopia sites, walk out on their bills, or any of the other evils that he was convinced young people perpetrate on a regular basis). However, what ended up happening was an eventuality neither of us had anticipated.

People started bringing their kids to the Bowl.

Now, don't get me wrong - I love kids. I'm completely enamoured of kids, in fact. But the Shop is not equipped to deal with them - we have no high chairs, very little "kid friendly" food, and we have computers. In other words, we end up with kids who are a) not restrained in any way, b) completely uninterested in their meals, and c) VERY interested in that machine over there that looks JUST like the one dad always says not to touch if they know what's good for them.

But you know what? This isn't actually a story about kids. In fact, the kids in this story were nicely mannered and very well behaved, especially for kids in a restaurant. They always said please, thank you, and excuse me, and were quite charming. The problem was their mothers.

These two women had arrived before the start of my shift, and right off the bat that's a bad place to be. You see, my boss (though he means well) really doesn't cook very well. That is to say, every cook prepares the food as he or she would like it to be prepared if they were the one eating it; my boss, by that standard, likes his food overly greasy, excessively salted, and either burnt or raw, depending on whether it's eggs or meat respectively. So I knew as soon as I arrived that these ladies were not going to be in the best possible frame of mind, and would likely need some coddling if I was to salvage any kind of a tip from them.

At first, they weren't actually too bad. Mostly ignoring their two daughters (about 4 and about 9), they chatted, complained about the food, and were generally receptive to my efforts to smooth them over. The girls more or less entertained themselves, ate their food with no problems, cleared their own plates, and were generally quite a pleasure to have in the Shop. It seemed like this table was not going to be as much trouble as I'd initially feared.

Then, the older of the two girls was trying to spread jam on her toast and got some on her sleeve, at which point her mother (the more vocal one in terms of complaints, on the grounds that she was "expecting" and therefore had a finicky stomach), asked her, rather loudly, why she couldn't act like a "[censored] human being for once". The two mothers then took turns reducing the little girl to tears, right in the middle of the Shop.

Now, I don't have any kids myself, which usually prevents me from offering any kind of parenting advice. I don't know the kids as well as the parents, they may have differing philosophies than I, etc. However, I do feel justified in condemning what was, in my eyes and those of my other customers, unequivocable verbal and psychological abuse. Those two women were absolutely in the wrong, and I greatly pity the child that that woman is expecting. It's parents like those that make the question of mandatory sterilzation such a sticky subject.

Needless to say, my solicitous treatment of these two women ceased immediately when they began tearing strips from their offspring in some kind of cannibalistic ritual of the self-esteem-impaired. As they left, the girls (both of them by this point) still crying and the mothers still sniping, I invited them not to return until THEY could act like [censored] human beings. Well, no I didn't, but I did seriously think about it. And they certainly won't be getting served at my Shop ever again - at least, not on my shift.