My poison pen

Last week, some of Jack's baby buddies and their mommies joined us for lunch at Ashoka the Great, an Indian restaurant in the Mira Mesa area of San Diego. Today, I mailed the following letter to the restaurant's manager:

Dear Sir or Madam:

I have been a loyal customer of Ashoka the Great ever since I moved to San Diego, nearly eight years ago. I frequently recommended your establishment to my friends and would often entertain out of town guests there. Even though I know people who said they received poor service from your staff, I never had cause to share their opinion. Not, that is, until last Thursday.

On that day, I suggested to a couple of friends that we take our kids there for your lunch buffet. There were six of us in the party: three adults and three children, all around 22 months of age. We were seated at a table near the entrance, just off to the left of the host station as you enter the restaurant. In the course of the meal, the children started getting a little noisy. Their voices were raised, and they were having fun and becoming excited. They weren’t crying or running around or throwing anything, but all three of us mothers were still doing our best to get them to lower their voices. We were shocked when, less than five minutes after the kids began acting up, the host came over to us and said, “You need to control your kids.”

Now, I am very conscious of trying to make sure my child doesn’t disturb other people. But we were at your lunch buffet in a room filled with several large parties. The noise level was already pretty high, even without our kids. As far as I could tell, no other customer came up to your host and asked him to say something to us. He did it of his own volition and was unapologetic about it afterward.

If children aren’t welcome in your establishment, I really think you ought to make that clear. Imagine how you would feel if a stranger came up to you and admonished you about your parenting skills and your children’s behavior. My friends and I were humiliated and rushed through the rest of our meal as quickly as we could. I was doubly embarrassed, because I was the one who suggested we go to your restaurant and thereby subjected my friends to this rude behavior.

Although I love the food at your restaurant, I will not be returning. It’s a shame that one ill-considered comment can undo eight years of customer loyalty, but I would constantly be on edge if I ever went back, waiting to see if members of your staff would pounce on me if my child got restless or excited. Furthermore, I am a member of several San Diego moms groups, each of which has several hundred members. I plan to post a copy of this letter to these groups’ Internet forums so that everyone will know how you treat families with small children. I would hate for any other parent to experience the mortification that my friends and I felt in the likely event that their children aren’t able to sit through an entire meal in perfect silence.