I'll have what the twelve year old is having.

[An Haddock]

Went to karaoke night last Friday. Was perturbed to find that not one but two tables had kids sitting at them. One group was a pair of adults with about 4 kids between them, the second was a couple right behind me with one kid.

This is a decent sit-down Mexican place but nothing fancy. Okay, I can see bringing kids. But:

1. It had to be close to 9 pm before they even ordered. Why are you making your kids wait so long to eat dinner?

2. There's AN ENTIRE RESTAURANT that's about 85% empty - why do you feel the need to sit in the bar? The kids were either occupying themselves with tablets or eating. I don't think any of them were paying any attention to whatever baseball game was on the TV.

3. You're taking up tables that people who want to drink could be using.


This is a big pet peeve of mine. And I realize it makes me look like a selfish asshole. If the shoe fits.

But I think any parent who brings their kid to a bar when there's a perfectly fine restaurant section attached is just as bad. A bar is a place for adults to get hammered and yell about football teams sucking and who got a handjob from what co-worker and what actor has the biggest schlong and how well does he use it. There's been nights with lesbians telling stories that would make Arga Barga blush and at least a couple of occasions where someone flashed their tits.

Why should adults feel like they need to dial it down in an adult establishment just because someone forces their kids into the situation? The last thing I want to see when I'm trying to relax in a bar is someone's kid.

Of course, both tables were taking their sweet time in leaving so the karaoke guy had gotten started but I was too disgusted to get up and sing. I just went home.


This has only happened a couple of times in the three + years I've been going to this place every Friday, so I guess that's good. And if it was a standalone bar - of which we have many in the area - I could understand. The kids are hungry, you want to stop in for a basket of wings or fries real quick. But this is an establishment that is primarily a restaurant and they have a small bar attached for convenience purposes, effectively. Literally 90% of the dining area is the restaurant. It's like the bar was an after thought.

[NecessaryCatharsis]

I don't take my kid out to eat that late unless there was some emergency (usually at emergency) that prevented supper at suppertime, but on occasions when I take my kid to a restaurant that has a dining side and a bar side they usually offer to seat us in the bar side. I always assumed that it was because kids are often noisy, messy, and not conducive to nice romantic dining atmosphere. The bar is also not usually being a rowdy place at 5 or 6pm, like it would be after 10pm, so there has never been an issue of listening to dirty stories or seeing flashers.

[MoonCat]

Why are you making your kids wait so long to eat dinner?

A friend of ours was so overburdened (husband was useless, spent most of his personal time with his friends or using his computer...yeah...) and so disorganized that it wasn't unusual for her to just be cooking dinner for her two kids at 9:30 pm.

[An Haddock]

I don't take my kid out to eat that late unless there was some emergency (usually at emergency) that prevented supper at suppertime, but on occasions when I take my kid to a restaurant that has a dining side and a bar side they usually offer to seat us in the bar side. I always assumed that it was because kids are often noisy, messy, and not conducive to nice romantic dining atmosphere. The bar is also not usually being a rowdy place at 5 or 6pm, like it would be after 10pm, so there has never been an issue of listening to dirty stories or seeing flashers.

This was somewhere in the middle... they'd arrived around 8:45 and there were already a few regulars in there drinking heavily. The place doesn't usually stay open super late (I think they close the bar at one, at the latest) unless there's a big crowd.

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

A girl I dated in high school, her family almost always had dinner between 9 and 10 pm. It was just how they did things.

[KatherineB]

I wonder if the restaurant staff actually asked them to sit in the bar so that they could get on with cleaning or whatever? That's the only thing that comes to mind.

[taxguykarl]

That actually makes sense, Kath. I can recall quite a few incidents in really late dining when certain areas within a restaurant/bar were off limits for that very reason.

[Monterey Jack]

Why does the thread title remind me of this...?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZluzt3H6tk

[An Haddock]

Why does the thread title remind me of this...?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZluzt3H6tk

I do like to name my threads after movies when possible.

[raudf]

I have never sheltered my kids from the bad behavior of others, so there would have been no need to "tone it down." What I do is use it as a learning opportunity, which yes, leads to some rather awkward questions. But I'd rather have my spawn (my oldest prefers to be called spawn, thank you very much) ask me those awkward questions than ask their friends!

That said, that late at night, where bar seating is all that'd be left? I'll hit the McD's, because I'm too much a brat to be out that late with two kids!

[cindybubbles]

The dining tables at Jack Astor's have crayons and brown drawing paper as tablecloths (so kids can draw on the table), so if that's not an incentive for families to use the dining area instead of the bar, I don't know what is!

[An Haddock]

I talked to the restaurant owner this morning as he's a friend of mine and I had to do maintenance on the computers in his office today.

The restaurant side doesn't close until ten, so they definitely weren't seated there so they could clean the restaurant part of the building. He agreed that although technically it was legal for them to be in the bar, he actually found their presence annoying as well because those are tables that people ordering drinks could be using. On more than a few occasions I've seen people walk in the door, see no available tables or barstools, and leave. (they do have two big-screen TV's for watching sports and such - especially popular this time of year with the MLB playoffs coming up) And the one group, as I had mentioned, was two sets of parents and about five kids, so it was an extra large table that could have seated several adults.

[emax4]

I recall a story of parents bringing their kids to a Ben Folds concert and being offended that he used adult language in his concert (no surprise). But he lashed out at them for bringing their kids to a 9 pm concert on a school night.

[Zellie Crescent]

Try being behind some dumb bitch who brought her kids to a rated R movie complaing that it upset her kids because there was so much violence not to mention the language and nudity, I went after her and got got a thingie for a free movie.

[Monterey Jack]

Try being behind some dumb bitch who brought her kids to a rated R movie complaing that it upset her kids because there was so much violence not to mention the language and nudity

There's really NO excuse for parents in this day and age not knowing what material in a movie might be inappropriate for their kids, as there are plenty of websites that will tell them EXACTLY how much profanity, sex and/or violence will be included. I mean, if your kid is under 12, taking them to ANY R-rated movie is already questionable, but still...do some damn research. I remember seeing The Wind Rises earlier this year, and despite a PG-13 rating and being a long, slow movie about plane designing, there were still two kids under the age of ten in the row in front of me, because the dad who brought them obviously saw "animation" and assumed "Oh, my kids will like this". I'm sure he was surprised to see his kids squirming with boredom throughout, and by how the characters smoked like chimneys.