the passionate ailurophile

The following is a letter that was published in the May 18 “Ask Amy” advice column:

DEAR AMY: The other night my large family (seven children, my wife and I) went to dinner at a local restaurant.

We made reservations for a family of nine. Upon our arrival, we had to wait for the table to be set up. As we were waiting, my children were eager to be seated.

As the waiter came to seat us, I overheard a patron saying to the hostess, “Please don’t seat them by us,” meaning my children!

I went back to the waiting area and confronted this man. I asked him if there was a problem with my children that he didn’t want to sit by them? When the hostess saw me confront this man, she ushered me to the table, saying that everything was OK.

Amy, everything was not OK. I wanted to leave, but my wife didn’t want to make a scene.

Was I wrong to react as I did? – Proud N.Y. Dad
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DEAR PROUD: I have a confession to make. I don’t want to be seated next to your kids, either.

Much of the time, I don’t want to be seated with my own. Your children are lovely, I’m sure. But picture this: I’ve just hired a sitter, leaving my own kids at home to have a rare intimate dinner with my spouse. I don’t want to sit next to your kids.

Or I’ve just scored a meeting with my client who’s passing through town. I don’t want to sit next to your kids.

Or I’ve got my elderly mother with me and she doesn’t hear so well. Yup. No kids for me, please.

You say that you overheard this gentleman speaking to the hostess. I assume that he didn’t deliberately direct his comment to you. You shouldn’t have confronted him. I would even go so far as to say that, in this instance, you set a poor example for your children.

Maybe this guy’s kids really are nice and well behaved. I don’t know, I wasn’t there. But the fact is, people like me tend to cringe when we go into a nice restaurant, and are led to a table next to a large family. Nine times out of ten, our meal is ruined because of this.

I don’t accept this any longer. I have learned to speak up. The first time was when mike and I went to this nice Chinese place that we used to like, and we were led past the almost empty, quiet, front room, to the noisy, brightly lit back room, at the center of which was a Hugh Jass family group of several adults and about a dozen kids. The kids were loud and running amok, throwing food, and generally being annoying. We were seated right across from them.

I tolerated this for about five minutes, and then I said to Mike, WHY are we sitting here putting with with this crap? We’d not ordered yet, and when a waiter came over to take our order, I asked to be moved to the front room. He asked me why, and I pointed to Romper Room. He tried to tell us that they were almost done, and would be leaving soon, but I wasn’t buying it. Please move us, or we will dine elsewhere, I said.

He did move us, albeit reluctantly. As for the loud group *leaving soon*…well, we were breaking into our fortune cookies when we saw them parading through the front room, on the way out the door.

We never did eat at that place again. Too bad, because we really liked it…when they seated us in the quiet area. But this was not the first time they seated us in the Romper Room area…it was just the first time I spoke up about it. I didn’t care if they (the adults of the loud family group) heard me, either. No skin off my ass…they were the ones in the wrong, allowing the kids to behave like monkeys on crack.

We now speak out about these things, and if the restaurant refuses to accomodate us, we speak out with our wallets and dine elsewhere

This is something that I will NEVER, ever understand about some restaurants. Who in their right mind would even THINK that a couple with no kids in tow would WANT to be seated next to a large, loud, family group? They don’t know us…for all they know, we could be one of those couples who paid good money for a babysitter, and therefore resents those parents who couldn’t be arsed to do so. In our case, we just don’t want to hear the little buggers screaming and crying! In any case, as Amy said in her response, “I don’t want to sit next to your kids, either.”

In today’s column, there was a letter responding to this, from a couple about our age, which I agree with 100%…