Restaurateurs have been known to curse children and parents when the tykes prove a dining room nightmare. Largely overlooked have been the kids’ reactions to their hosts behaving badly. As a new section of the social media platform Reddit shows, the little nippers can have a biting wit, exercised with crayons and placemats.
A sampling of the feedback they’ve left for servers, death talk and all, leads this week’s rundown of why some managers were wishing they’d gone ahead and become Agway representatives.
Sharp crayons
Turns out there can be more venom in a kid’s crayon doodling than the little critics’ cuteness might suggest. Consider, for instance, the little girl who drew a sun in sunglasses warming flowers in a field. Smack in the middle of it: a tombstone. An adult at the table asked who was buried there. The little girl responded, “It is me. We waited so long here I died.”
That’s one example of the restaurant-table art that’s recalled in a new section of Reddit by server, parent, fellow guests and the artists themselves, now grown up.
Another recollection recounted how a mother at a nearby table had asked her son what he was drawing. He responded, “Gotta draw my own damn milkshake because it's taking too long."
Yet another post recalls how a manager approached a table of children playing with loud toys. He offered to provide them with a free dessert if they’d put the offending playthings away. They did—but then proceeded to draw various ways they’d like to see the manager die. The staff collected the sketches and had them framed as a present for the boss.
His turnaround, whose nightmare?
The chef-proprietor of a wild-game restaurant in Toronto was tired of protesters parading outside his Antler Kitchen & Bar, shouting accusations that he’s a murderer. The aptly named Michael Hunter tried to appease the objectors, saying he’d add a vegan tasting menu—a bold move, given that his specialties are traditional and cutting-edge preparations of meats such as venison, rabbit and boar.
Then he got angry.
Hunter decided to flex his rights as a carnivore by breaking down the leg of a deer in the front window of his streetside establishment on Friday. He then disappeared for a few minutes and came back with a cooked venison steak, which he ate with obvious gusto right there on view—to the howling and righteous indignation of the protesters outside. They complained to the media that the chef was doing it just to annoy them and make a point—which a video of the situation does nothing to refute.
The protesters are demanding that the restaurant switch to a completely vegan menu, and plan to maintain their protests until Hunter bows.
A $25K YouTube hangover
At least crayoned complainers appear to be acting out of innocence. Not so the young man who figured he’d generate hilarious YouTube posts by pretending he was a former husband of In-N-Out CEO Lynsi Snyder, who is known to be a serial bride (she’s currently on Marriage No. 4).
Prankster Cody Roeder reportedly swaggered into two units of the retro favorite and pretended he was checking on operations for the benefit of his ex. He claimed to be the chain’s new CEO and insisted that the establishment set up an impromptu taste test to verify the staff was meeting standards. In a second store, he told a customer that the burgers were contaminated and that the one on the man’s tray needed to be confiscated.
The staffs were convinced, and called the police. Roeder’s posse filmed the whole thing, thinking it’d be a side-splitting YouTube post.
Instead of becoming an internet star, Roeder was sued by In-N-Out last week for $25,000. The chain is also seeking a restraining order.
Roeder tried the same thing at a Taco Bell, but was similarly thwarted.
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