We win.

Having deja vu about this topic, so stop me if I've told it before.

Yesterday evening our family went to a show at the Children's Theatre Company (did you know it's the only children's theater to win a Regional Theatre Tony Award?  Yup, pretty awesome) and then, as is our custom, we went out for a late dinner at a restaurant.  It was almost 9 p.m. when we found a place to park the car.

We try to pick places that tend to be empty on a late Thursday, since it's hard to walk in and get a table for six otherwise.  You'd be surprised how much variation there is in that.  A couple of weeks ago when Mark was out of town for a long business trip, I got a babysitter and went out (also on a Thursday night) to have dinner by myself, and tried a new pub in the next neighborhood -- the menu was fine, kid-friendly, and the beer was excellent, but the place was completely packed.  It was a forty-five minute wait for a table.  I didn't mind (I sat at the bar), but I crossed it off my "walk in with the whole family" mental list.

Lots of places, though, are empty at 9 p.m. on a Thursday.  If you can't scout it out ahead of time, you can make a good stab at it by seeing who has a happy hour that starts around then.  Personally, I think a mostly-empty pub at happy hour is a perfect place to walk in with four hungry kids and two thirsty grownups.   You can actually get a pretty good deal on dinner that way, especially if some of your kids are thrilled to eat the nachos and wings that are on the happy hour menu.  

It's still a little fun to see the host's eyebrows flinch when we walk in.    I only have 4 children, and I always wonder about what the flinch looks like when it's more than that.

+ + +

In this particular iteration of toddlerhood, we've been extremely lucky.  Our youngest, who's not quite three, has been a very peaceable restaurant baby from the beginning:  he eats slowly and so stays occupied throughout a dinner, is content to sit in a chair or on a lap, doesn't throw things, and isn't very loud.  (Not all of our toddlers have been like this.  We had an 18-month stretch of never ever going anywhere at one point.)  We go out fairly often -- we take a lot of road trips, for example, and then we have the theater-and-late-dinner tradition, and I like to celebrate our anniversary with dinner for the whole family at a Dress Up restaurant.

Does 

Along the way somewhere we developed The Game.

It goes like this:

If a server, or even better, another diner in the restaurant, comes over to our table and compliments us on our very well-behaved and polite family, we win The Game.

If nobody says anything to us, we don't win The Game.

That's it.  We don't give the kids a prize for winning, or a punishment for failing to win.  We just smile and tell the kids (if they didn't happen to hear) "Guess what?  We won The Game."  Or, if nothing happens, the nine-year-old will ask as we are leaving the restaurant, "Did we win The Game, Mom?"  and I will say "Not this time," and the children will sigh and be slightly disappointed.

+ + +

Some time ago the oldest decided that it was important that there be a way of losing The Game, so it was decreed that if anyone ever makes a point of coming to the table to tell us what horrible children we have, or to ask us to be quiet because we are bothering other diners, then that will be an instance of Losing The Game.  Hasn't happened yet, though.

+ + +

Last night we won The Game:  the server came over and in an awestruck voice told us that we had very well-behaved children.  (The clear subtext was "You struck fear in my heart when you came in with four children at nine p.m. on a weeknight, but it turned out that my fears were unfounded.")  Everyone was pleased.  It seems that The Game motivates everyone to be excruciatingly careful about pleases and thank yous, and also to be solicitous of the toddler so as to prevent his screeching with dismay.  

We have runs of bad luck at restaurants from time to time.  (We have particular trouble at Indian restaurants.  For some reason, somebody always knocks over a mango lassi.  Always.  If we ban mango lassis, then they knock over water glasses instead.)  I try not to be intimidated, though.  I have to admit that a lot of the stress of going to restaurants with kids is relieved by a rule-of-thumb that I made long ago, when I had two small children, and used to be anxious about the spills and messes  -- 

Smile and tip generously.

(The more I think about this, the more I think it's only right.  Children create the same amount of work, or more, for a server than an adult diner does; but they eat less-expensive food and don't drink alcohol, so if you just tip the standard 15 percent, the servers and busboys who work your table are systematically underpaid.)

I don't know if twenty percent is really enough -- I've never run the numbers, I suppose I ought to -- but if everyone is pleasant and nothing gets spilled, we tip 20% as a minimum.  I'll tip 25% if we make a big mess or if the server is especially helpful to us for some kid-related reason.

Because really, I want the server to be thinking when we come in:  Hey, that one family with the four kids is in my section.  I win!

Comments

[Jenny]

I worked in a restaurant seasonally for five years. I don't think the flinch is necessarily related to the absolute number of children, but that there are more than two. The problem with more than two is that most of the tables are set for four people and generally speaking people with kids don't tip that well and there are lots of misbehaved children.

So you have the expectation that this family is going to take up one of the limited, larger tables, the server is going to get his legs run off by sometimes quite demanding children, the possibility of the table (and floor) being left a disaster area is high, and the tip will likely be in the ballpark of your average two-top. Not every family is like this, of course, but it happens often enough to make the employees wary.

It is similar to the Sunday-after-church crowd. Lord save us from the Sunday diners in their Sunday finest leaving loose change as tips. Not everyone, of course, but enough that there won't be many converts won while they work in restaurants.

The antidote is definitely to be pleasant, do not let your children engage in wonton destruction, and tip well.

[Bearing]

Speaking as a former server, Jenny, what do you think about the twenty percent minimum? Is that enough to make up for the fact that half my table is probably ordering a kid's meal?

[Jenny]

I think a 20% minimum is good.

I worked in the restaurant over ten years ago so things may have changed, but it wasn't unusual for families to leave around 10%. It wasn't at all unusual for a big Sunday party of 8-10 people to leave $2 on the table.

For us, (the employees) it wasn't so much that the tip was less because the food was cheaper--although a table full of water with lemon generated angst--but the extra work that children entailed. The pile of crunched Cheerios all over the table and floor or the endless running to the kitchen for the "I changed my minds" or "I'm inhaling my drink/food/app/salad like I'm never eating again" that made the servers antsy. It would just pour salt in the wound to have all that work to do with the bill in the $40 range and only get a $3-$4 tip.

The mantra was, "If you can't afford the tip, you can't afford the restaurant."

[Rebekka]

Oh, man, when we were in the US this past summer with our 8-month-old in the throw-everything-on-the-floor stage I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. We were driving all over the place and eating at all kinds of restaurants, she ate off our plates so they weren't even getting a kid's meal ordered, and usually there was more food on the floor than on the table by the end. Part of it is because it is way, way cheaper to eat out in the US than in Denmark, but I think there were a few places where I was tipping close to 50%. (Usually involving broken crockery.)