Entitled Customer Demands Waiter Tell Couple Sitting Near Her To 'Stop Kissing'
Kissing isn't a crime — even in a restaurant.
Drazen Zigic | Shutterstock One of life’s most valuable lessons is that we can’t control other people’s behavior, only our own reactions. Yet some people don’t take that lesson to heart, and they walk along this earth as though everyone owes them.
One young man working as a server in a restaurant found himself facing that exact kind of person, setting the scene in the r/entitledparents Reddit thread.
An entitled customer demanded the waiter tell a young couple seated near her to ‘stop kissing.’
The waiter described his place of work as an “American-style restaurant,” noting, “We do have a small bar [but] it’s more of a family-style type restaurant.”
“I have worked at this restaurant for about 6 years, and have had my fair share of entitled customers,” he said. “This weekend, I had one of the worst families come in.”
The family in question was there for a birthday celebration, with a party size of 18, including grandparents, cousins, siblings, and some birthday guests. The waiter set the scene, explaining, “This wasn’t a catering event… They were in the middle of one of the rooms and there were booths on multiple sides of them.”
“In one of the booths near the windows, there was this couple, they were teens, both 14,” the waiter said. “I just finished student teaching and I knew the kids… Both kids seem like good kids.
“The boy is a football player, he’s very smart and gets good grades,” he said. The girl is a sweet girl, she’s always at his games… She is also a smart kid with a lot of potential.”
The waiter explained that the parents at the birthday celebration “had an issue” with the teen couple kissing.
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The mom demanded that the waiter tell the teens to ‘stop kissing,’ and when he refused, she got even more upset.
“I told them that there were no rules against kissing your loved one in our restaurant because there aren’t,” the waiter wrote.
The mom insisted that their display of affection was “inappropriate” because she had kids who could see them, but she didn’t stop there. “This woman storms up to them and tells them to stop kissing because there are kids around,” the waiter recounted. “They politely ask her to go away, and she refuses.”
Their kissing wasn’t the only thing the mom took issue with. As the waiter explained, “She then noticed that the boy had painted nails and went on about how disgusting it was.”
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The boy rightfully got upset and it took multiple staff members to de-escalate the tension.
“The other parents in the party started complaining about how we were being ridiculous and how they should sue the restaurant for indecent exposure,” the waiter said, at which point the owner got involved.
“She [was] still going on with her ‘think of the children’ rant,” the waiter said. She got so worked up that the owner took her to a separate part of the restaurant until the teens had finished their meal.
While no one would disagree that a full make-out session would be out of line in a restaurant, that clearly wasn't the case here. If it was, restaurant staff would have intervened.
“We banned the parents from the restaurant for the foreseeable future,” the waiter declared, showing that sometimes, the good guys do win.
As one person noted in the comments section, “If people don't want their children to ‘be exposed’ to things that happen, why bring them into a public space?”
Another Redditor offered an analysis of the mom’s entitled behavior, saying, “The irony here is that 14-year-olds are children, and she's a fully grown adult acting like an actual petulant child.”
The waiter ultimately pointed out an indelible truth: There’s nothing wrong with kissing someone you care about, even at a restaurant.
Alexandra Blogier is a writer on YourTango's news and entertainment team. She covers social issues, pop culture, and all things to do with the entertainment industry.