dont get me wrong - mine is a family friendly cafe, and we've been 'awarded' as much based on our willingness and ability to cater for young families but the other day I came as close as I've been in a long time to evicting someone from a cafe it was actually two someones - two mum's and their badly misbehaving three year old children the kids poured out a water jug on the table, tipped salt everywhere, and were demolishing the sugar sticks on the table as well - but this was actually the least of my problems after being asked repeatedly not to the kids ran amuck up and down the length of the cafe, and if this wasn't bad enough they began shouting at the top of their voices we weren't super busy at the time but we were reasonably full with at least two business luncheons going on at the time I asked the kids to pipe down three times, clearly stating that other patrons like to enjoy their lunch in peaceful and quiet surroundings I'm not unsympathetic to the plight of parents, I have two young kids of my own In fact I was up a good part of the night before looking after my kids in some capacity or other - and it was only the fact that I was completely sleep deprived myself, and thus incapable of making a clear decision regarding asking these customers to leave, that prevented me from doing so in any other circumstances I believe I would've acted sooner and asked them to settle up I was actually thinking about what words to say at the time that would be appropriate to evict a patron from the premises - but all I could come up with was: "Why dont you take your little brats and %#@%@# off!" So I refrained from so doing so as I'm quite convinced that no matter how noble my intentions on the day - those are the exact same words that I would've used as it was I did speak to the table on four separate occasions and they eventually pipe down a bit and then leave but I have to wonder what were other patrons thinking at the time? if they we're thinking "Right, that's it - I'm not coming back to this joint - it's too noisy" - then even $100 per baby chino would not come close to covering the real cost in this instance having said that if a cafe is well set up and well managed to cater for young families, then there is no reason why kids should get out of control, as staff and management should be on hand to manage any potential situation before it escalates we literally sell 100's of baby chino's at my joint per week, and are happy to cater for families - but in two years of trading in the current location I've never seen kids behave like that and NOT be censored by their mums sure some kids behave badly sometimes but the mums (and dads for that matter who come into my cafe) are usually the first ones to try and settle their children - and if that doesn't work then 9 times out of 10 they remove them from themselves from the cafe altogether ... P
