We Are the Many, You Are the One
Okay, so an Italian place in New Jersey, a place called Nettie's House of Spaghetti, has joined a growing list of eateries making the decision to limit or outright ban children from the premises. In this case, beginning in March, no kiddies under ten years of age will be allowed. Here's the statement they issued:
“We love kids. We really, truly, do. But lately, it’s been extremely challenging to accommodate children at Nettie’s. Between noise levels, lack of space for high chairs, cleaning up crazy messes, and the liability of kids running around the restaurant, we have decided that it’s time to take control of the situation. This wasn’t a decision that was made lightly, but some recent events have pushed us to implement this new policy. As of March 8, the day we return from our winter break, we will no longer allow children under 10 to dine in the restaurant.
We know that this is going to make some of you very upset, especially those of you with very well-behaved kids, but we believe this is the right decision for our business moving forward.
Thank you for understanding.”
Ah, but not everybody understands and the whiners have begun whining. Some are complaining on the restaurant's social media – “That is really sad to hear .. I was looking forward to trying out your place but with a well behaved 9 year old I’m not welcome .. sad ..” And that's to be expected. It's happening everywhere and I probably would have just let this story pass as a non-story had it not been for a lengthy screed I saw in Bon Appetit in which the writer not only decries the ban but posits that restaurants that ban kids are “missing the point of restaurants.”
In this writer's view, restaurants are apparently supposed to be training grounds in a child's social development. By banishing them to fast food joints and places like Chuck E. Cheese, it seems we are all somehow responsible for stunting their social growth.
The writer exhorts that a restaurant is “a perfect place for parents to teach their kids how to be people around other people, and the perfect place to teach parents how to shepherd their kids through the world. It’s the ideal environment, too, for non-parents to remember that they are part of a community, and that by tolerating kids in their space, and doing so with patience and kindness, they are upholding their own stake in the future of the greater community.”
Wow! And I thought I was just going in for a nice plate of spaghetti that I could consume in relative peace and quiet. I had no idea that “the future of the greater community” hung in the balance.
Look, there are a couple of key issues that are being overlooked here, both by the savior of the “greater community” and by the parent of the well-behaved nine-year-old child, chief of which can be summed up by another commenter on Nettie's Facebook page: “… having worked in the industry since I was 14, I’ve never seen anything like I have in the recent past. Kids are out of control and most parents are oblivious. The disregard for manners and common decency is unreal.”
Bingo! THAT'S why restaurants are banning kids. Because too many undisciplined kids are brats and too many oblivious parents are imbeciles. And it is, as the commenter commented, a fairly recent phenomenon.
I grew up in the late fifties and early sixties. My kids grew up in the eighties and early nineties. When my mom took me to a restaurant and when I took my kids to a restaurant, the expectations were the same as they were at home: come to the table, sit down, shut up and eat. You don't scream, you don't play, you don't run around like a rat on acid. You sit down, you shut up, and you eat. After which you can be excused and you can go to your room or you can go outside and scream and play and run around all you want. But you're not gonna do it at the table, whether that table be in the dining room at home or in the dining room of a restaurant. Them's the rules.
And I never had the least bit of trouble enforcing those rules. Neither did my mom. Something inherent, maybe? I don't know. I just know that there were many occasions on which I was complimented for my kids' behavior in restaurants. I didn't beat them, I didn't threaten them, I didn't scream at them. I didn't have to. Neither did Mom have to do those things to me. My kids and I were, as the Nettie's commenter described, “well-behaved.”
Let's be honest: in most households today, the inmates run the asylum. The kids make the rules and mom and dad just go along with them because it's easier and less threatening than dealing firmly with the misbehavior. You want to talk about sad.....that's the definition of sad. But it's true.
And now you want to bring your misbehaving brat into my restaurant so he can run around and be a general nuisance to all my other customers while you sit obliviously by? And more than a nuisance, a liability? Here's something from Nettie's management: “It’s become a liability to us - kids running around the restaurant in circles when we’re trying to carry trays of food and drinks has made doing our jobs extremely difficult.” Not to mention dangerous.
So your little angel darts out in front of my server carrying a tray of hot soup or coffee or something. And your sweet, darling, inoffensive baby, who was, after all, just being a child, winds up with second and third degree burns. Who are you gonna sue? Certainly not yourself for being a rotten, overindulgent parent. Am I right?
The savior of the future of the greater community further claims that “we have to more critically think about what role restaurants play in our communities, and who gets to be included. If you’re looking to feel like god for the price of an entree, and you feel like the presence of kids disrupts that experience, and that is the reason why you don’t want kids in restaurants, then your relationship to restaurants is broken.”
Excuse my Italian, but vaffanculo! Considering the price of an entree these days, you're DAMN RIGHT I expect to “feel like god.” Or, at the very least, I expect to have my dining experience respected. Which, sadly, segues into this loony's next paragraph: “If we exclude children from that experience, we’re only further entrenching the worst parts of modern society: everybody believing they’re solo entities, obligated only to their own self-interest, with no idea what it means to bend a little to give way to others, to automatically scoot your chair in so someone can pass behind you. A society full of people who are acting only in their own self interest is a society where everyone—even those who don't particularly like eating dinner next to kids—is doomed.”
DOOMED!! OMG, I don't even know where to begin to unpack this baggage.
Believe me, I'm the first person to scoot my chair in so somebody can pass behind me. But not if that somebody is somebody's screaming, out of control, misbehaving brat, who should be sitting down, shutting up and eating like the rest of civilized society. And don't tell me that the restaurant is the place to learn that civilized behavior. NO! You LEARN it at home and then you PRACTICE it in the restaurant. That's the way preceding generations have done it and if you are truly concerned about the “future of the greater community,” that's the way you should be advocating for it to be done now. Or would you decry that I'm obligated to my own self-interest if I objected to your disrespectful, undisciplined offspring running and screaming up and down the aisles of a movie theater or a church?
I'm sorry. I've got sixty people sitting at tables in my restaurant, acting in their own self-interest and paying a good deal of money for the privilege of doing so. In you walk with your kid-who's-just-being-a-kid and your laissez-faire attitude toward manners and discipline and sixty other folks suddenly have to “bend a little” to give way to you so as to preserve the future of the community? I don't think so. Remember what Mr. Spock said about the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few. Or the one? Sorry, cupcake. We are the many, you are the one. How godlike of us!
And Nettie's alluded to “crazy messes.” I've seen what you and the future of the community have left behind. And I've seen beleaguered servers trying to scrape and clean the results of your lack of discipline off the tables, floors, chairs, and walls. But, hey! You don't have to clean it up so why should you care? Talk about acting in one's own self-interest. If you're so almighty enlightened, why don't you stick around and clean up the mess your brats made?
Okay, I'm ranting now, so I'm gonna quit. Bottom line, after March 8th, go to Nettie's. Or to anyplace like it that caters to “the worst parts of modern society.” Chances are you'll find me there in my god-like glory acting in my own self-interest and risking the future of the community. Make sure you say “hi.”
