I Came, IPad, I Tantrum
I work at a sushi restaurant. I sit a table containing two adults and a little girl. I say little but she must be nine or ten years old. She comes in with an iPad in hand two inches away from her face, I greet the table and immediately this girl is hitting me and throwing the menus at me.
Girl: “Wifi!”
Through all this the parents are laughing, thinking it’s “cute”.
When I bring the food over the mom tries to take the iPad and they are literally playing tug of war. The child is SCREAMING!
When mom wins, the little girl then grabs anything within arm’s reach: chopsticks/napkins/paper menus and begins lighting them on fire (the table has a candle for ambiance) and tries to burn the mom!
Mom is trying to laugh it off and do that whole “gentle parenting” thing while the kid escalates into a full meltdown: screaming, throwing themselves on the ground, rolling around on the floor, and trying to run away and out of the restaurant.
Girl: “This is abuse! I hate you!”
Finally, she gets her iPad back and all is good for the rest of the meal… until the mom leaves to go to the bathroom at the same time the dad is outside having a cigarette (didn’t blame him), thus leaving this child alone. She notices she’s alone and starts having a full mental breakdown worse than the last one. I step in while a coworker heads outside to find the dad.
Me: *Stepping in.* “Hey, kiddo. Mom is in the bathroom, she’ll be back in a—”
Girl: “They abandoned me!”
She starts writhing about on the floor, so I take her hand and lead her over to the manager’s station away FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE RESTAURANT and try to calm her down. Her mom comes out of the bathroom right next to us.
Girl: “You b****! You left me!”
The dad comes back in with my coworker, seeing this behavior and not reacting – this must be normal. He throws a hundred dollar bill our way (on a meal that was $55) and just escorts his family out without a word.
Coworker: “Some therapist in the future is gonna make a lotta money off of that one foshooooo…”
