A large part of our job in hospitality is dealing with the offspring of the guests who come through our doors. This is often the unlucky but necessary lottery of being in hospitality, everyone has the right to a pleasant dining experience; even children. As anyone who ventures out of their house will know, there are vastly different personalities of children and vastly different parenting styles... But no matter what your parenting style is they all converge in specific places on a weekend, usually a restaurant. Now I know what you are thinking and it's all ok, this is not a rant about kids running wild. This is a blog post about my experiences with having to not only look after their parents but also become a casual nanny in many situations; as most servers find themselves.
Fairly early on in my career, I learned that people used me as a way of policing their children, it's not a role I enjoy at all but it does sometimes make me smile, and on occasion, I even play along with the frazzled parent. "Look" stated one particularly desperate Mum one day, "The lady is coming, and she said if you don't sit down and eat your dinner you can't have any ice cream!". Upon hearing this ultimatum the flame-haired toddler slowly turned his head but notably not his body, and gave me the most "Damien" looking scowl I have ever seen. "Horrid lady" the child mumbled as I cleared some of the plates off the table. Now, I of course did not say he couldn't have ice cream if the didn't sit and eat his dinner, but was merely being used as a pawn in his ever increasingly desperate mother's game to get him to cooperate. One particularly "At his whit's end" father once said to his little girl "That nice lady will call the police if you don't stop crying, and then they will take you to prison!" The child immediate stopped mid-scream, in what I can only describe as a "stunned into a petrified silence" state.
Sometimes, however, it's nice to be able to help parents out in a more kind and genuine way than just being used as an ad hoc social worker or stand-in police officer. This particular memory is one that sticks with me:
As I have previously mentioned I spent a few years working in a restaurant next to an international airport. One summer day a little girl and boy ran into the restaurant, stopped, looked at me, shouted my name, then ran to me and asked me if I could look after their table today. It turned out that the family had been in the restaurant the year previously when they were going on their summer holiday, and they were doing the same thing this day too. A year earlier they had been sitting near a TV that we happened to have in our bar area at the time; and had seen the wreckage of an aircraft that had gone missing. We always had the 24-hour news station on, and it was just by chance the leading news headline when they were in town because they were going on holiday the next morning. The children became frightened and upset and told their parents that they didn't want to go on holiday the next morning. I heard this unfolding as I cleared their plates away and gave them menus for dessert, their Mum and dad were trying everything, no doubt because they had paid a small fortune to take the children away to Florida on the holiday of a lifetime, but nothing was convincing the children. I wasn't hugely busy at the time, so I bent down next to the children and asked them what the matter was, they tearfully explained about the TV and that they didn't want to get on the plane the next day, I heard their Mum exclaim to their dad that she didn't know what they were going to do if the children still felt that way in the morning. I took a chance that maybe I could help, so while I was bent down at the side of their table I told the children a story of how that one aeroplane that was on the TV, was just one single aeroplane out of the thousands of flights that had taken off on that day. I told them (the true story) of how my Dad travelled for work constantly, and in his career had been on hundreds of aeroplanes and that every single one of them had brought my "Daddy" safely to and from each place every time. The children watched and listened to me intently as I explained that every single day all these aeroplanes take off and land, with "lots of boys and girls going on their nice holidays" onboard that that almost all of them come back safely with lots of happy children. The youngest one turned and said, "So the lady's daddy goes on hundreds of aeroplanes and he's ok Mummy!" The children seemed to relax and by the time it was ready for them to go back to their hotel for the evening, the children were back to being excited about going on holiday. Their Mum and Dad were extremely happy, and it turned out the children boarded the plane the next day and retold their story while on board to remind each other not to be afraid. They had a wonderful holiday and returned a year later to go somewhere else.
It really touched my heart that those children not only were able to get on board without tears and enjoy their holiday, but that they had remembered my name and come back to find me an entire year later because I had left an impression on them. That was one of the first of many moments when I realised that working in hospitality can be so rewarding; and that something relatively small such as a conversation on one evening could impact someone and help them for an entire year. Their Mum and Dad thanked me again and said the children were fine in part thanks to my reassurance and that they requested they came to find me this year. I felt so humbled.
There was also a boy who sticks in my mind for his hilariously carefree attitude to life, that's the thing about children, we adults can definitely learn a thing from them from time to time. He was about Six or Seven years old, and he wanted to order a chocolate cake, I took the order and turned to his parents and said "It's absolutely fine for him to have the cake, but it's a full adults portion and it IS huge, is that still ok?" and his parents agreed but tried to put him off and told him he may be better ordering a children's dessert. He insisted he wanted the huge piece of chocolate cake, and when I brought it to him and said "Are you sure you can eat all that!?" he turned to me, as cool as a cucumber and said "YOLO" I burst out laughing and so did his Mum and Dad, and sure enough, he ate the lot!
For those of you who aren't down with the kids "YOLO is the acronym for you only live once". To see and hear such a small child come out with that, really made me laugh and I thought to myself as I walked away "You're absolutely right kid; YOLO".
Things I learned from these experiences:
While our job can often be an extremely long and thankless task it can also be hugely rewarding, and a relatively small act of kindness from you can really make a family's day or even, a year.
I solemnly swear that should I ever have children; I will never use my servers in a restaurant to blackmail my child.
You absolutely only do live once, so order that slice of cake even if it is the size of your head!
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