Parents: Have you ever been shamed for bringing your children into a restaurant?!

Apparently, this is a thing! Maybe you have heard of it, maybe you have not… Maybe you have experienced it before? I certainly hope not.

It was one of the worst experiences of my life. The worst. Its days later, and I am still trying to get over it.

How can people this cruel, actually exist in the world?

They say it takes a village to raise a child. If that is true, which I believe it is, let me tell you, these two “ladies” are the village idiots.

Instead of trying to help us, they chose to try and bully us, by insulting our children, in front of our children. To me, this is the lowest of the low.

Whether one has children, or not, surely the rest of the world understands that all children are precious, and they should be nourished and cared for by all. All.

Here is my husband’s account of what happened, in an open letter that he shared with Red Lobster, Canada:

Red Lobster

I wanted to share this experience that occurred this past Friday at the Red Lobster in London, Ontario.

Last Friday, April 20th me, my wife, and 2 young daughters (4 years old & 18 months old) visited the Red Lobster located on Wellington Street in London Ontario at around 5:30pm.

What started out as a welcoming experience quickly turned into a nightmare as soon as we sat down.

Sitting next to us were 2 older ladies saying very vulgar, harsh and spiteful things about us and our children, such as:
• how noisy our children were being
• how terrible parents we were for not keeping our children under control
• how our children should be caged up
• telling us to “f- off”

Understandably, this left us feeling very upset and anxious, bringing my wife to tears. I have never experienced something like this before in my life, and unfortunately, now my 2 very young children can say they have.

I don’t know what their issues were, whether they were drunk (they were drinking), grumpy, or just malevolent, spiteful people.

Yes, our 4 year old was crying out a bit but she quickly quieted down, nothing out of the ordinary for a family restaurant.

The 2 wait staff that were standing in proximity during one of the exchanges were left with their eyes wide open and mouths jaw-dropped from hearing the things that were being said to us. One of them quickly went to get the manager.

What happened next was quite worse in fact than what we just experienced. The manager simply moved them to another table in the restaurant leaving us with no comforting message or consoling – still leaving my wife with tears in her eyes. The manager also stated as she walked away, “oh they’ve been dining here for over 30 years…”.

Well if that’s the type of clientele you accept in your restaurant, then please consider us as customers no longer.

We tried to continue the night by ordering our meals, but we were all still very upset by this episode and decided to leave. To add insult to injury, we were still charged for the drinks that we barely started at the table. And believe it or not, as I walked out of the restaurant carrying my 4 year old, one of the old ladies shot me the finger as they continued on with their dinner.

I’m not an expert at customer service or client satisfaction, but I do know that neither of those things were achieved that night.