Top Five Restaurant Pet Peeves

I was doing some browsing on the Associated Content website and ran across an insightful article written by S. Thompson about ten pet peeves of restaurant dining that urged others to sound off about their own pet peeves. I realized that like the author, I too have an array of things that bother me when eating in restaurants. But I've decided to knock my list down to five...

"This Ain't Chuck E. Cheese." - (Unruly Kids) ...

In the sixth season of the HBO series, "Sex and the City" ("A Woman's Right to Shoes" episode), Samantha has lunch in an upscale restaurant, where a child is misbehaving nearby. While there, she is berated by the waiter for talking on her cell phone inside the premises. She provides one of her usual snappy retorts, implying that it is the unruly child who should be chastised instead. I was really feeling Samantha on this one. But you don't have to have a general intolerance for the presence of children in order to have your dining experience sullied by a family's unruly tots.

For some reason, some parents see fit to allow their little ones to go "exploring" while in restaurants. That exploration typically involves (but is not limited to) running underneath tables, climbing around or standing up in booths, kicking seats, or wandering to other diners' tables. These incredibly enjoyable activities are usually accompanied by a fair amount of noise---all of which the parents seem completely oblivious to. When I was growing up and my parents took me to restaurants, those opportunities were used to coach me on how to behave in public dining establishments. While the concept of eating "foreign" foods in a community environment was exciting to me as a child, this was the time that I learned how to execute good table manners.

"Where's the Food?" - (Menus Without Pictures) ...