Two nationwide restaurant chains, Applebee's and Olive Garden find themselves on the horns of dilemma after two separate occasions where young children ended up with alcoholic drinks in their cups instead of the juice they had ordered.
At Applebee's(and frankly, I can't think of a better place for this to happen to...not a big Applebee' fan), a 15-month old ended up with margarita mix and alcohol in his cup, instead of apple juice. At Olive Garden(and, I'm more sad about this one, because occasionally I do get a jones for overly sauced and cheesed Italian-style food) a 2-year old ordered orange juice, and got sangria.
Oops. My bad. So, of course, because this has happened twice in less than 3 weeks, we have a terrible problem. An epidemic of under-age toddler drinking. Mostly, my emotion at this runs somewhere between mild upset and jealousy.
I'm finding it hard to work up seriously good rage at this issue, because I know even now, with a 5 year old and an 8 year old, if they get a beverage that comes out in an closed, opaque container, my wife and I will check to make sure it's what we ordered. I think I could tell the visual OR olfactory difference between apple juice/margarita and orange juice/sangria. So..somewhat bad on the parents.
The jealousy comes in because I can't rememeber the number of times I begged my wife to let me give my toddler aged daughters just a tiny bit whiskey to take the edge of one of their inconsolable moments. Alas, as the voice of reason, she always told me no, so the whiskey usually ended up self applied.
Now...lets look at this whole thing a bit deeper. My dad is a good man, and a good dad. His only real shortcoming is a lack of 'Yoda Like' wisdom dispensed in sound bite form. I can remember one occasion though, where I was talking about some people that had gotten in trouble(and severely disciplined) at a prior job for playing fast and loose with time-cards and such.
He listened to my story(because some of the guys were friends) and at the end asked me, 'Who'd they learn it from?' When I asked him for clarification, he said 'These guys HAD to learn this from someone' and then he finished with one of his rare 'Yoda' moments that have stuck with me. 'Son...very few people get caught the first time.'
Very few people get caught the first time. This applies to many, many things. If you do get a speeding ticket, it's probably not the first time you sped. If your wife cuts your wee-wee off for sleeping around, it probably wasn't the first time you did so.
If you serve kids alcoholic beverages TWICE in THREE WEEKS and get negative national press...it's probably not the first time kids have ended up with alcoholic beverages.
There just might be a whole bunch of parents who were wrong when they thought their kids were quite moods were caused by a 'food coma' after visiting a notable national chain restaurant.
No comments:
Post a Comment