One of my "finer" accomplishments

Earlier today I was ready the blog at waiterrant.net and found little humor in his plots to sever the heads of misbehaving children in his restaurant. After all, I have a child and I frequent restaurants *gasp* with my child. Remember, she's 5 1/2.

I am not a patron who "thinks" their child is well behaved in restaurants. I KNOW that my child is well behaved in restaurants and here is why:

Back in the mid 90's when I was 23 I thought I needed to be married to the jerk now known as my ex-husband. At the time we married I was working full-time at a local bank and part-time as a waitress at the local members only country club. My jerk, I mean husband at the time, had a nasty habit of overdrawing our joint checking account (a trait I now know he continues to this day) ultimately causing me to lose my job at the bank. So, I went from a part-time waitress to a full-time waitress pretty quick.

I worked doubles almost every day just to try to maintain a positive balance in the checkbook - mostly to no avail. I won't say that this was a plush job as far as waitressing gigs go, but it wasn't shabby. I made $5 an hour (which was almost twice the "normal" hourly wage for wait staff anywhere else) and had a guaranteed 15% tip on every ticket I wrote. Sometimes I even got a higher percentage of tip on the ticket and occasional cash.

So, working at a country club you deal day in and day out with the so-called upper crust of the area. I'm telling you now, their kids are B R A T S, and mostly the spoiled rotten variety.

Since I made a living for nearly two years as a full-time waitress / wait-staff supervisor I have a fond appreciation for any person who serves me a meal at a restaurant. I tip well, I say please and thank you and I ALWAYS stack my dishes as if I were busing the table myself.

So, when the time came to start socializing my daughter by eating out, I made damn sure she knew how to behave.

Ever since she's been able to speak coherently she politely tells the server what she would like to eat and drink, says please and thank you, and sits STILL in her chair. We've never taken Cherrios or any other snacky type of kid food to pass the time. Sometimes, if I know we'll have a long wait at the place we're going, I'll take a coloring book and some crayons to pass the time.

So, Mr. Waiter Rant - not all children are brats that need to be destroyed. I hope that someday, when you decide to procreate and fill the world with your spawn, you do a favor to society and teach your children how to property behave in a restaurant setting.