Would you welcome a policy in which your restaurant bill was adjusted according to your children's behavior?
Restaurant Gives Parents Discount for 'Well-Behaved Kids' & Sets Dangerous Precedent
As
any parent knows, eating out in a restaurant with children can be a bit
of a dicey game. Sometimes your kids are angels, and other times you
just want to crawl under the table ... if it wasn't such a horrific mess
from all the food they'd thrown down there. But what if your bill
depended on how well-behaved your children were?
A Reddit user recently posted a picture of a receipt from an Italian restaurant in Washington named Sogno Di Vino with a title "If only all restaurants did this for people with kids ..." On it there was a $4 discount for "well-behaved kids". A sweet gesture, and I bet those parents were pretty proud.
But the whole thing makes me kind of nervous.
Can you imagine if you were charged more for those times when your children aren't quite so good (as plenty of commenters suggested should be standard)? Or if the next time you didn't get a discount?
More from The Stir: Rude Waiter Calls Customers ‘Fat Girls’ on Restaurant Bill but It Gets Worse
Eating out with children is already filled with plenty of pressure for parents. Every raised voice, every dropped spoon can make a mom feel like all eyes in the joint are searing into her. And yes, sometimes children are out of control and should be removed from a restaurant. No one deserves for their meal to be interrupted by kids gone wild, but there also needs to be a certain amount of tolerance for families dining out without parents feeling like they're being judged even more. Most children just aren't going to be seen and not heard, and as long as mom and dad are making sure they're not heard too loudly, they deserve a little bit of a break. Having a random waitress decide what "well-behaved" is could be all sorts of problematic. I also can't imagine that restaurants really want to get into a battle over the bill with "those" parents who always deny their precious little ones ever do anything wrong.
Would it be nice to be rewarded when the planets align and you all make it through dinner delightfully? Absolutely. But I'm not sure it's worth the price you'd pay for the days when your kids act more ... like kids.
Would you welcome a policy in which your restaurant bill was adjusted according to your children's behavior?
There's just gonna be alot of pissed off parents when someone denies them the discount for some bullshit reason
I don't think this is fair at all, though maybe this is the restaurants way of dealing with children. Probably they really don't want anyone with very young children or children with special needs dining at their establishment. But they can't very well say that, so they give this good child discount instead.
Our son can have some really challenging behavior, however he's usually very well-behaved at restaurants. That said, I still wouldn't patronize this restaurant.
I wouldn't want someone with no knowledge of child development deciding the difference between good behavior and bad behavior. Aside from the fact that a stranger has no business placing a value judgement on a child, behavior isn't good or bad, it's developmentally appropriate or developmentally inappropriate.
Quoting parentalrights1:
Well there are so many people that can't stand the site of children and one persons idea of a well behaved child might not be another's.
There's just gonna be alot of pissed off parents when someone denies them the discount for some bullshit reason
So a server simply can't determine that a family didn't disturb his other customers and give that family a discount?
No one ever seems to realize how disrupting kids can be.
No, I think that kind of policy is foolish. My kid has lots of restaurant experience and was always well-behaved, so we would have qualified, but no.
I would because my children are typically well behaved and respectful.
If you know people in OK help out with getting people together
- Cafe Steph
on Feb. 6, 2013 at 3:28 PM