What is it about restaurant playplaces?

[notalwaysright]

It's one thing to see kids at grocery stores and DSHS, both have essentials. But when I used to close a lot at my work I was baffled by the parents who dragged their clearly tired and cranky kids to a fabric store at 8:30 PM. We sell nothing that is required to live. I see it with sick kids, too. Why not let your poor child rest at home, instead of shopping for scrapbooking paper for two hours? Or when a parent is shopping, why not bring something to entertain them? I'm not a parent, but I feel like there are lots of cheap and easy options.

I was just at an party where there were many small kids, but the event wasn't specifically for them. So somebody brought a bunch of construction paper and markers/glitter/stickers, and I'm telling you that was like gold. I'm often a grouch, but I was pleasantly surprised by how well that kept their attention. I suppose it required a small amount of planning, which is beyond SCs.

[Slave to the Phone]

Well that assumes there IS another adult to stay home with the kids. When you see a family that obviously has mom and dad there, I agree. If it's one parent with kids, I try to give more grace. Could be a single parent (child care aint cheap) or they could work incompatible shifts.

I'm thinking about getting some crayons at Dollar Tree for our guests. They may or may not reimburse me for them but I don't really care. Kids need to color if mom and dad aren't going to watch them.

I'm sorry that I wasn't clear, I was talking about 2 adults who identify as father and mother to the 2 or 3 children all in my small cube at the same time. I understand that child care isn't cheap and sometimes hard to get and I understand that a single person with several kids can't always leave the kids at home. I was just grousing about the above mentioned 2 adults with children.

Be careful with crayons. Unattended children don't always use them on paper. The cube walls here are liberally decorated as are the carpets and blinds. Unattended children also destroy toys or take them. My cube is not noisier than the cubes with toys/crayons. My coworkers are constantly complaining about damage from crayons and destroyed or missing toys.

Now, something that really annoys me is that we are not allowed to give hungry children food. I would happily buy crackers or fruit or even candy for the hungry kids, but people have been written up for doing that. Hungry children can't help but complain because their bellies are empty and I'm in the business of giving people food stamps. Hungry kids make my heart hurt. (not allowed to do it lest they choke or have an allergic reaction)

[WishfulSpirit]

Good point on crayons. Maybe some simple games. The hotel actually gives us this little card matching game, that worked well today when some of our younger guests got fidgety. Btw, are you sure your clients HAVE a home to leave the kids at? Many families manage to stay clean while living in their cars. You wouldn't know they were homeless to look at them.

Don't even get me started on food stamps. We got jerked around so much that we gave up, after my husband was called "another damn cripple" by a social services worker. Food banks around here are a joke. They give out bags of candy and rotten fruit. Never any proteins. One box of mac and cheese per family. You're allowed to visit once a month. Seems like the mission of social services around here was best stated by Dickens: "give the paupers exactly what they don't want, and then they get tired of coming."

Now that we're doing better I'm fighting what I think might be a mild food addiction. I was so hungry for so long that I'm obsessed with being full, which is unfortunately translating into a junk food fixation. Only the fact that my antidepressants suppress my appetite and my job gives me no time to eat is keeping me from being as big as a house.

[Slave to the Phone]

You have mentioned how badly you were treated by an idiot, judgmental social worker before and it pissed me off then and did again. That person shouldn't be working in social services if that's how she thinks. Its NOT our job to judge anyone, its our job to help people get all the services they need to get them back on their feet.

Personally, I'd much rather give food stamps to "another damn cripple" than to an able bodied young person with marijuana tattoos on their necks, but its not my job to judge.

I'm horrified that your food insecurities are causing you health problems now. I honestly feel like going to your local food stamp office and bitch slapping all of the workers. I'm so sorry.

(maybe it would help to cut up some buttered bread into small pieces and put it in a baggie in your pocket. You could then just grab a small bite of something fatty and chewy when you need it.)

BTW I'm pretty sure that my families have homes because they show me rent receipts to get that exemption.

[WishfulSpirit]

Thanks SlaveToThePhone. Things are better and I'm slowly getting my diet under control. I've been thinking about keeping some nuts or trail mix around, that's easy to eat quick and provides fat and calories. Add some dried fruit and there's also fiber and vitamin C. Hmm...dried apricots.

[Lace Neil Singer]

A friend of mine used to work as a waitress in a restaurant which claimed to be "family friendly". The worst table she ever had to deal with consisted of a single mum with about six children ranging in age from a baby to a five year old. The mess was unbelievable, with ground in food all over the carpet, spillages on the table and, disgustingly, a used nappy dumped under the chair where the woman was sitting. Yes, the woman had changed the baby on the table where they were eating and dumped the nappy afterwards. My friend flatly refused to touch the toxic table, and in the end, the cleaner had to deal with it. My friend said she didn't get paid enough for that kind of shit; funnily enough, a few months after that she found a new job. She still says that job was the worst one she's ever had.

[evilhomer]

I try to let my daughter be a kid at the playplaces but keep some ground rules in place. Other kids on the other hand I've seen kids under 10 get dropped off in the parking lot to go in and run free. The worst though is when the kids come in who think they're monkeys, they climb, they swing, they jump. I've complained to management before but when it gets really bad, I'll either get in the 'parents' face and let them know to do something about it, or I'll go in and take control. It's led to a few confrontations but I let them know that somebody has to behave like a responsible adult, and they certainly weren't doing it.

[Nunavut Pants]

I've seen a fistfight in a bar just about start between a parent who was letting their child run around shrieking at the top of his/her lungs, smash into things, and generally behave like an out-of-control animal. One of the other bar patrons shouted at the kids, who were (predictably) a bit scared by such. And so Mama Bear, who had been very busy ignoring her progeny for the past 45 minutes, waded in and started screaming at the other patron. Who started shouting back. Things escalated to the point where I was afraid blows were going to be exchanged, but someone was able to defuse the situation just enough.

I was very tempted to shout at the kids, but I restrained myself. I'm not a parent, and I know my tolerance level for kids is not the highest, so I try to err on the side of caution. But boy, was I glad when that guy shouted at them!

[Shotgun Chuck]

I have once again waded into the combat zone, and this is a serious question.

What is it about these rooms, that makes adults behave like children? You never messes of this caliber in the main lobby. People eat in the main lobby, they behave like mature, respectable adults. People eat in the playroom, they suddenly decide not to pick up after their kids and in some cases they don't even pick up after themselves. If I ran the place, the first thing I'd do is knock out the dividing wall, remove the kiddie tubes and slides and whatnot, and turn it into an extension of the main lobby.

[BearLeeBadenaugh]

I have a friend whose company cleans play areas for some of the chains. None of them get cleaned anywhere close to often enough. Most of his clients are on a schedule where he visits once every one to three months; he only has two clients he visits weekly, one of those being a children's hospital.

You honestly don't want to know some of the things they have found in the ball pit. The ubiquitous condoms and so forth, though that doesn't seem as popular as it once was, buddy blames the proliferation of CCTV. All sorts of assorted jewelry, dime store chains, cheap kids earrings and the like. The ick factor starts to go up when you see the grocery sack of used bandaids and kleenex. Food too, of course. Nothing like being able to fill a bucket with half eaten nuggets and fries. I think his worst food story was finding a sandwich that had been discontinued nearly 2 months prior.


On another note, cleaning a ball pit sounds like a royal pain in the ass, even with the right gear. Buddy has a vac truck with a specially built ball washing machine. The balls get vacuumed out to the truck and run through the scrubber, then blown into a giant mesh bag, either in the truck box or if he's got room inside he lays the mesh bag down on a tarp in the store. Once the balls are out and clean, he brings in the rest of his gear and gets to work. Starts scrubbing at the top of the playset and goes down from there, then brings in the steamer, mops the floor, and then finally reloads the pit.

[Shotgun Chuck]

Two drink spills today within 15-20 minutes of each other. One in the main lobby, one in the playplace. I think both were kids dropping their cups.

Now I think it would be easier to just ban kids from the restaurant.

Maybe that's taking it too far, both were freak accidents. But I still have to wonder why tables in the playplace end up so much messier than tables in the main lobby where kids are eating.

[EricKei]

I can actually think of a reason that isn't "because they're kids"....

Playplaces are often behind doors, and as far away from the counter as possible; sometimes their entrances aren't even visible from the counter. Thus, the parents feel less obligation to clean up at all.

[Shotgun Chuck]

That's actually a pretty good idea.

[Shotgun Chuck]

Since this thread died, I've had to do emergency cleaning in the playroom, what is it, four times now?

First Time

As a family passed the counter, one of their kids blurted out "There's pee pee in the tubes!" I just blurted out "Whaaaaaaat?, partially out of disbelief and partially in an attempt to stall the inevitable as I felt the eyes come to rest on me and realized that I would be the sucker despite having no training or qualification in hazmat cleanup. Someone apparently said that the mess was in the slide, so I donned disposable gloves and a bottle of sanitizer and went to clean it.

I think that was the third loudest I've ever prayed in public. When you're trying to clean a steep slide, the sanitizer you're putting down is acting as a lubricant, there's bodily waste below you but you don't know exactly where, and you start to lose your grip, that is nothing short of terrifying.

But then it was done. So I'm good to go back on the counter, right? Uh, no, actually, the slide was one place the mess showed up, but the source was elsewhere.

Yep. I had to go clean the entire freaking tube network. Every. Single. Piece. Did I mention that our tube network is huge and has two or three layers in some places? And I had to deal with a kid who ignored my makeshift barricade and then refused and cried when I tried to make him leave. And then, after I finally got done (35 minutes after my shift was supposed to end), the MOD called me into the office and told me he "had" to write me up (says who?!) for not telling him that finishing was going to take me more time than I had. No, apparently he couldn't have thought of that and come in to get me, no, it's my job to come down and tell him.

After I got done with that, I raided all the napkins out of my glove box and used them as a temporary seat cover on the way home. Once I was home, uniform went straight into the washing machine. Blech.

Second Time

I'm working the counter as usual when complaints start coming in about something that might be, probably is, fecal matter contaminating the slide. I get a fresh towel and some gloves and go check on it, since it might just be chocolate cake, or at least that's what I'm hoping against hope that it is. When I hear someone mention the smell, though, hope goes out the window. I take a sample with my gloved, toweled hand, and while I can't get a good read on the smell (suspect the sanitizer on the towel was overpowering it)... yeah, there's no way I'm gonna call that cake and still be able to live with myself. I clean out the bottom, since there are visible chunks there, and prepare to give the slide a full clean.

Yep. Still terrifying. Did I mention that, though that sanitizer acts as a terrific lubricant when you're going down, those uniform shirts stick to it like glue when you're trying to push yourself back up?

Fortunately, I didn't have to clean the rest of the tubes, though I went full OCD Germaphobe mode on anything that anything had touched.

Third Time

I get reports of a drink spill in the tubes. Well, at least it isn't a used drink this time. I get ready and ascend the tubes. First, the kids are actually helping me find it this time, bless their little hearts. Second, it's a ChocolateCreamMiniCookie milkshake, and it's been there for a while. Third, most of it is still in the cup, which I can tell easily because the cup is still up there too. Unfortunately, I'm still missing the fourth, which is "who lets their kid take a milkshake into the tubes?"

Fourth Time

This one was only barely in the tubes, but someone said there was something wet in and on one of the entrances to the tube network. Could have been urine, could have been water or juice (no idea how they would have got there unless a kid spilled their cup, but you'd think someone would have seen that), still don't know for sure.

At this point, I should probably just ask them to teach me the drive-through before this happens again.

[EricKei]

I'd definitely document this -- especially the "making you do HAZMAT cleaning without proper gear (disposables don't count!) or training." Dates, times, all details you recall. On paper, at home. Get 'em written down while the memory is still fresh. For obvious reasons, don't let anyone there know you're keeping track.

Could come in handy in the future if you just happen to have a word with the Labor Dept. at some point (for, say, a Hostile Workplace claim, a report of possible HAZMAT protocol violations (I dunno the legalities on this; Corporate might be interested, as well), or simply to have a chat with them once you've moved on to other things). The writeup nonsense definitely needs to be a part of that. He wrote you up for following his orders, and I seriously doubt he would have been willing to take over for you, had you clocked out on time. Also, if you did leave when scheduled, I guarantee you that the customers would have had their kids up on the rides again the instant you left, which would have led to complaints about either the chemical smell, the stuff you were trying to clean up, or both ("There was nobody to tell us not go go up there!" "What about the half a dozen 'No Entry' and 'Closed' signs?...")

At the very least, a manager should have been dealing with this crap (no pun intended) if no employees had the training.