It's not like this is a fancy dinner place with white tablecloths and candelabras. It IS the fanciest place in town, but that's not saying much. It's more like a diner with all booths, pie slices in a glass case, and a "bar" that looks like it's straight out of a Shiny, Silver, Trailer-type 50's style diner.
I'm not arguing that a place can't have a policy on gratuity for standard group sizes. I didn't even have a problem with the group of 5 policy, although I do find that to be a LOW number. My problem is with the owner's statement that they should have charged the baby double! No, he wasn't joking.
It's a good thing Wyatt didn't get hungry while we were there. If he had, I probably would have started nursing him, and the owner probably would have asked us to leave or quit nursing or something. As it was, Wyatt was the perfect example of a good baby in a restaurant. He sat there quietly munching on his high-chair cover the whole time. Never made a squeak. Ok, so he did reach his claw out and pull a salad plate onto the floor--but that is OUR fault for not realizing he could do that. It didn't even break! The older kids have broken plenty of plates in lots of restaurants --better restaurants than this, with a group of 5 (3 adults and 2 little kids), and haven't been treated like kids are the worst possible customers.
Well, this was going to be a status update, but I guess it's turning into a blog post.
It's not news to me that this little town isn't toddler-friendly. It's not news to me that the Aloha Spirit is severely lacking from Nebraska. It's not news to me that the old "The customer is always right" policy is long gone from America, but come on, how stupid. Counting a 5-month-old as a part of a "party of 5?"
Now, instead of sewing tonight, I'm going to go find lots of restaurant review sites! whoo hoo! fun! This town thinks it is a "tourism destination." So, people must go online looking for reviews and recommendations of where to take their FAMILIES on vacation.
4 comments:
I wish I could say that I could say that I am shocked...but I'm not. I would swear that Ken and Dales didn't want any customers. We were asked to leave once for visiting too long after we were done...I was unaware there was a time limit on how long I was allowed to visit after finishing my $40 breakfast that they charged gratuity on for me, Jason and three kids (2 under the age of 2 that shared a plate). GRRRRRR! We only eat there once in a blue moon and are reminded every time on why we never eat there. I would've allowed those sweet kiddos to trash the place after the way you were treated! I'm sorry for your poopy experience =(
WHY did the owner say they should've charged the baby double?!? Wow, wow and more wow!
We had an incident with a non-friendly kid restaurant and I was really disappointed. Was one of my favorites but now my husband swears we will never go!
I noticed you put an Urbanspoon "spoonback" (spoon icon) on your blog. We're happy to have you join our list of bloggers!
However, in order for the spoonback system to work properly and automatically detect your reviews, you need to put the spoonback for the specific restaurant in a blog post about that restaurant. At the moment, there's a spoonback in the blog sidebar instead.
As soon as you add spoonbacks to some blog posts, we can start linking to them from Urbanspoon. If you have any further questions, please let me know.
I once was charged gratuity at Ken and Dales when our party consisted of 3 adults, an 18month old and a newborn. A few years ago they kicked my 87 year old great grandmother out for politely sending back cold soup!
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