Two parents who recently took their children for dinner at a pub restaurant have been slammed online after it emerged they made “zero attempts” to stop their kids from throwing food around while they ate, and then also made no effort to clean it up before they left.
A fellow diner at the pub shamed the family by posting a picture online of the mess they had left, which showed chips scattered all over the floor underneath the table they had been sitting at.
And the post quickly went viral, with hundreds of commenters responding to call out the family for their “disrespectful” behaviour.
The diner, from Australia, shared the picture on Reddit alongside the caption: “Is this OK now? Family at local pub let their kid fling food all over the place and made zero attempts to stop them, then left it for staff to clean up.”
Read what people have to say
Commenters were quick to slam the family for their actions, but many disagreed that the behaviour has become more common recently, as they insisted that people with no matters have always existed.
One person pointed out: “Now? These d***heads have always existed. I lost track of how many times I heard ‘it’s their job to clean it up’ working at the movies as a kid. I mean, it was but why you gotta make it harder? Don’t complain when you have to wait to get into the cinema because some idiots in the prior film had the same mindset.”
While another said: “I hate parents like this. We went to [a restaurant] the other day and I made sure I cleaned the high chair after we used it and I made sure the table was clean. I wouldn’t let my children throw their food around at all. It’s just so disrespectful and I would never expect someone else to clean go after us.”
A third wrote: “My kids have been those kids dropping food everywhere (not deliberately) and I have been on my hands and knees in more than one venue cleaning it up waving off the staff who kept offering to do it. My kids, my problem. Wait staff aren’t paid enough to have to deal with that as well.”
Others shared their experience from working in restaurants and pubs, as they said they’ve often had times where they’ve had to tell children to stop running between the tables – and have been criticised by the parents for it.
Someone shared: “I’ve even had parents yell at me for telling their children to please not run around the dining room or put their shoes away if going barefoot. I used to have a stone grill, I literally have a piping hot 3kg stone with a steak knife with me do you want me to accidentally permanently disfigure your child?”
And another recalled: “I worked at a really busy city restaurant when I was 19 and there was one kid in particular who was an absolute terror and his parents did NOTHING to control his behaviour. If you can imagine a three-year-old running around a restaurant with hot food on plates. Then he started sticking his fingers in the automatic sliding doors.
“Still nothing. I picked him up under his armpits and brought him back to his parents and told them he absolutely has to sit in one place, you should have seen the look on their faces. But by that point, they couldn’t really argue with me stating the obvious.”
