A couple of weeks ago, I took my elderly mother out to an early Sunday supper at a local restaurant owned by an acquaintance (and not a chain). We knew that it would be crowded with families, so it was no surprise; but after a half hour wait, we were seated. Then, a family with 4 children from 7 to 11 came in and was promptly seated because they reserve the large tables for such groups.
No sooner than they were seated than the children started acting up, and it wasn't just screaming and crying. They were running around the restaurant and making a nuisance of themselves, diving between chairs and tables, getting in the way of the servers, and ruining everyone's meals. The next table asked their server if they could speak to the manager, who came over after 5 minutes and was rude and condescending to them with the standard "this is a family restaurant" bullshit. The couple had only been served their drinks and salads, but decided to get the meal to go and asked their server to wrap it up so they could leave. The server apologized and got them ready to go as quickly as she could.
But, just as our the server brought our meals and two more glasses of wine, two of the little shits ran head-first into our table and knocked the wine over, into our meals and all over me, at which point I lost it and grabbed them both by the ear, hauled them over to their parent's table, and demanded an apology. The parents took an attitude with me, as though it was my fault their spawn had ruined our meals and my clothes. The dipshit manager tried to intervene, and it the situation only escalated from there.
I told dipshit manager that I know the owner of the place, referencing him by name. He didn't like that, but the authority figure in me came out and I calmly told the manager that if he valued his job, he'd give the bill for every diner in the room to these poor excuses for parents and ask them to leave. He started to argue with me, and to the credit of everyone else in the room, they applauded me.
First, one table got up, put on their coats, and made their way to the exit. Then another, and soon, everyone was leaving as the manager watched and it dawned on him that no one had paid their bills. The manager grew so flustered, he started shouting that he'd call the police, which is when I took out my phone and called the owner of the place and held the phone out so he could hear the manager screaming at people as they left. All I heard from the other end of the line was that he was on his way, try to remain calm, and begged forgiveness.
Meanwhile, the parents just sat there as their children continued to run amok. We gathered our coats and left, glaring at the parents who sat there with a smug look on their faces. As we reached our car, the owner screeched into the parking lot and ran over to apologize to me, promising he'd make it right. The parents thought they'd won, but oh, to be a fly on the wall... I got a check in the mail from the owner for $100 to cover our dry cleaning bill, a coupon for a complimentary meal for four, and a note saying that he'd fired the manager, charged the parents for our meals, and barred them from stepping foot there ever again.
