Last week, for Mihaela's "Gotcha Day" celebration, we took a family trip to the zoo. It was a fun couple of hours and we got a "classic" picture of Mihaela studying the map of the zoo as she tries to decide which animal to visit next.
Anyway, afterwards we went to Mihaela's favorite restaurant, Chick-fil-A, for lunch. Mihaela loves their chicken nuggets and will not eat nuggets from another store. Besides that, Chick-fil-A is a family-friendly company who publicly shares our family values, so we support them whenever we can. They also have the absolutely BEST customer service. The crew is the epitome of politeness and helpfulness. If more businesses trained their employees to show high regard for the customer that these people do, then there would be no need for any business to hire lawyers.
Now I know to those of you outside of the South, Chick-fil-A restaurants are mostly found in the mall. However, down here in the south, they have stores just like Mc-D's, BK, and Wendy's AND, they have indoor playgrounds. Not just your run-of-the-mill, everyday, restaurant play areas, but the best cleanest, biggest, and best play areas. Up til now, Mihaela has shown no interest in the play-area and we have not taken her into one. However, as we were sitting in the very crowded restaurant (we had to circle the parking lot three times to find a parking space, the drive-thru line literally surrounded the store and we still got our food hot and fast - having worked in the fast food industry, I was amazed at how efficient they were as they were being slammed) right next to the window that looked into the play-area. Mihaela was awe-struck and stared longingly at the other kids playing as she consumed her tasty treat of breaded and deep-fried chicken.
I'll admit, I was hesitant to take her in for one simple reason...I have no idea what the etiquette is in these common play-areas. How am I, as a parent, supposed to act as I supervise my child? What expectations should I have for her? I mean, obviously, some of that is pretty natural...no hitting, biting, scratching, of other children. BUT what happens if unsupervised children are being unruly? Do I only care if Mihaela is in danger of being injured? What if a child wants to play with Mihaela, but she doesn't want to play with him? How about if she wants to play with someone who doesn't want to play with her? What do I do? What expectations do the other parent's have of me and my child?
I know it is not fashionable to be concerned with politeness in this day and age. But the who reason the rules of etiquette exists are to foster smooth relationships in situations where people may not know each other. These are protocols (uh-oh...going computer geeky) that allow for successful transactions between two disparate systems. I don't know the rules and am therefore uncomfortable to take my daughter into the situation. So, if anyone knows where I can find a list of rules, protocols, etiquettes for restaurant play-areas, please let me know.
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