I am a server in a mid-to-upscale restaurant. The kind of place that targets middle-class folks for their special occasions. So, most people who come in are dressed and behave well because it’s their special birthday dinner or the like.
All things considered, I have had a relatively drama-free time working there with a pretty notable exception.
A woman comes in with her partner and two children, a boy and a girl who appear to be twins, around eight or nine years old. The first warning flag was how the kids were dressed. While the woman and her partner are both in nice dresses and look as you would expect for a nice dinner out, the children wore mismatched flip flops, dress-up costumes, and the little boy had a hat that had LED lights all over it and kept flashing. When they came in, my manager made a straight line towards them.
Manager: “Hello, ma’am, I’m sorry to stop you like this, but our dining room does have a dress code, and I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask that the children change before we can seat you.”
Woman: “Oh, they are autistic.”
She doesn’t get upset or agitated or seem like she is arguing at all, just casually and calmly says it as if that is supposed to explain everything.
Manager: “Well, ma’am, that may be, but many of our guests are here to celebrate big events and have saved up to come here. As such, we ask that people be respectful, and things like your son’s hat can be quite the interruption to a special occasion dinner.”
Woman: “Oh, he wanted to wear that, and he’s autistic.”
She just sort of shrugs when she says that.
My manager is typically pretty good about having a backbone, but she’s a single mom with a non-verbal autistic son, and I guess the woman claiming her twins were autistic struck a heart string, so she made an exception. She asks the woman to remove the son’s hat, but lets them be seated. My manager then gets called away to deal with a back-of-house semi-emergency, so is unavailable for a period of time.
As soon as the family is seated, the children scatter. Running around the dining room, yelling, and throwing things at each other. I approach the mother and her partner.
Me: “Excuse me, ma’am, please keep your children seated as they are disturbing the other guests.”
Woman: “Oh, they are autistic.”
She says this, then just gives me a blank look like she has just answered my question and is waiting to see if I want anything else.
Me: “You’ve said that, however, I will have to ask that you keep them in their seats.”
Woman: “It’s okay, they are autistic. While you are here, can you tell me about the fish special?”
I’ll be honest, this catches me off guard, and I just kind of go into autopilot and start giving my speech about the specials of the day. Suddenly, I hear a commotion behind me. I turn around to see that the little girl has grabbed a steak off of another diner’s plate and thrown it at the boy, and she is about to follow it up with a handful of mashed potatoes when my manager comes storming back into the dining room from wherever she had been.
Manager: “That’s enough!”
The ‘mom-voice’ seems to shock the kids into compliance, who at least come back to stand by their mother’s table.
Manager: “Ma’am, that is enough, your children have been a disturbance, damaged property, and now have stolen food from other patrons. I will need your credit card information to pay for the damages and replacement meals. Following that, you, your partner, and your children are permanently banned from [restaurant].”
Woman: “Oh no, it’s like I told you before; they are autistic.”
Manager: “That is irrelevant, please give me your credit card or I will call the police.”
Woman: “…but they are autistic.”
Eventually, the woman provides the credit card information, and the family is escorted out. I later found out that in addition to the food fight I had witnessed, the kids had also knocked a picture off the wall and broken the arm off of a chair when climbing on it.
The strangest part of all to me was that at no point did the woman get mad, or yell, or anything. She just kept saying ‘they are autistic’ and seemed genuinely baffled that people didn’t just go ‘Oh, okay, carry on then’. And throughout all of it, her partner didn’t say anything either, just kind of quietly followed.
