What’s The Butter For?

May 9, 2010

in Illness/Medical Stories

I was working on a slow Friday night in a small family owned B.B.Q. place in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was getting close to closing time when a family of 3 (mom, dad and a small child) came in and sat down at one of my booths. It was almost 10pm and I thought nothing of the fact that the child was wanting to lay down in the booth.

I took the order for the parents and asked if the little one would be having anything… they responded “no.” I brought salads and bread to the table as well as butter for the bread. I continued to do my closing duties when I noticed the mother pull out a large butter tub like you have at home. Wondering why our butter (which was the same) was not to her liking, I watched. WRONG THING TO DO!!! There was no butter in the tub!! It was empty… The tub was for the child, whom I thought was just tired, to throw up in!! WHY??? If you know you have a sick child… get your food to go!!

{ 30 comments… read them below or add one }

Clare May 9, 2010 at 5:59 pm

Poor little kid. Stuck with selfish parents too. 🙁

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Jack May 10, 2010 at 3:23 pm

How did the parents know the kid was going to throw up, that’s sort of a spontaneous reaction. At least they came prepared and no one had to clean throw up from the table or the floor.

Waitresses are the biggest bunch of complainers in the world.

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poco May 10, 2010 at 5:24 pm

Seriously?

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fuckmytable June 27, 2010 at 8:15 pm

I had a kid unexpectedly throw up while serving them this Friday night. The kid didn't look sick and at and felt fine afterwards — just one of those freak things.

They asked that I clean it up. I usually vomit when I smell, hear, aor see vomit, but cleaned it up anyway.

I feel like I deserve a couple bucks for cleaning up a kid's puke, personally. That's disgusting.

And Jack, you've obviously never waited tables so you can suck a dick. We bitch about a lot of pointless shit, but considering how high stress our jobs are and how much shit we put up with on all sides from managers, corporate slaves, customers, and anyone else with whom we come in contact while on shift, I think we're allowed to bitch a little bit.

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Jack June 28, 2010 at 12:26 pm

Poor baby, you had to clean up after a child got sick. That's something parents do everyday. Grow up, and get over yourself.

No one ever said being a waitperson was an easy job. It is a way to earn a respectable living without much formal education. Waiting is not for everyone, if you don't like doing it, and doing what is required, quit. Find something else to do. Maybe you could be a nurses aide, oh I forgot…bedpans!

Why do people spend months and years working at a job they dislike?

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Spice Girl April 26, 2013 at 2:34 am

Lol you can't talk

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Diablo August 21, 2016 at 9:08 am

Jack. Coming from a unlucky person, who will probably be a waiter at one point, I can tell you this. The waiters and waitresses have every right to bitch, and your ass isn't helping very much. This is a site for them to vent, not for you to milk every word someone says. You aren't welcome here. I pity the people who have to serve you at restaurants.

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Amy May 18, 2017 at 7:19 pm

Are you serious????? What kind of selfish rude parent brings a SICK CHILD to a restaurant?!?!?! And what kind of idiot defends those parents? That child should have been at home IN BED!!!!!

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Jack May 10, 2010 at 7:01 pm

Everyone of them who posts here complains about something. My suggestion is if you don't want to "wait on" people, and you don't want to "serve" people, get another job, or go back and finish elementary school or something. Whatever, just stop bitching about your customers.

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Clare May 11, 2010 at 2:54 am

You don’t know much about young children, do you Jack?

The fact that the child didn’t want to eat and instead wanted to lie down can be an indication that the child isn’t feeling well. The fact that the parents brought along a butter tub for the child to throw up in supports that.

Chances are the child had been complaining that their tummy hurt or maybe they had been running a fever.

At any rate, if your child is sick you should show some common courtesy and keep them home. They might be contagious. The parents should have either had food delivered to their home or one of the parents should have either called in an order & picked it up or gone to a restaurant with a drive-thru. Just don’t be hauling a sick child around. That’s not fair to the child or to the restaurant staff.

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lizzi May 11, 2010 at 2:22 pm

also not fair to the rest of the restaurant customers. it’s common courtesy as well as common SENSE to keep a sick kid out of the general public instead of exposing everyone around you to your kid’s germs and sickness.

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Jack May 11, 2010 at 4:09 pm

Wait a minute, just because the child was lying down in the booth does not mean he/she was sick. It was “near closing time” remember. The child could have just been tired. Because a child has a sick tummy doesn’t mean he has a serious condition or a contagious disease. Little ones throw up from time to time for various reasons, none of them are usually serious.

If you know your child is really sick, of course you shouldn’t take him/her out, but a tummy ache, come on people, you can’t jump to conclusions. It’s not time to report these parents to “youth services” for God’s sake. This is just a complaint from a crabby waitress who doesn’t like her job.

As to knowing about young children, yeah I do, my wife and I raised four healthy, happy kids, who sometimes had an upset stomach.

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anon May 11, 2010 at 8:00 pm

well jack, wouldn’t it be better to keep a child with a tummy ache at home in case something like that DOES happen? it’s always better to be safe than sorry. trust me, i’d rather be home than hear and smell some kid barfing in the booth next to mine. especially if the parents just thought ‘oh theyre fine, its a tummy ache’

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Clare May 11, 2010 at 5:41 pm

Exactly!

If if hear and/or smell someone vomiting, I start gagging & vomiting myself.

Personally I would be very upset & uphappy if someone brought a sick child to a restaurant and they started throwing up in my vicinity.

That being said, when a child is feeling under the weather, that makes their immune system go down, which then makes them more likely to pick up an illness from another restaurant patron.

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conrad August 20, 2011 at 11:39 pm

Jack….I usually don't respond to people like you who do nothing but try to intentionally get a rise out of servers who just want a chance to vent. But your post hit me like a thunderbolt. Honestly I figured you out to be a twit with too much time on your hands. If what's true about you having a wife and grown children ( I assume since you said they were raised) you have to be the most immature adult I have ever seen. I seriously feel sorry for anyone that even knows you or maybe that's why you spend so much time here dissing others because you have no friends. Jack you really need an ATTITUDE adjustment. And besides the point that you most likely never worked in the food service industry you know nothing about the crap servers have to deal with so your opinion really doesn't matter. I would guess you are pretty much one of the people we complain about having to wait on.

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Heather October 4, 2010 at 11:37 am

If waiters/ waitresses complained about all of their customers, this blog would see no end. However, as has been previously pointed out, it's only a small percentage of customers who result in the wait staff relaying their interaction to other individuals. These customers are usually difficult or unusual. Just because waiters and waitresses tell their stories on this site does not mean they hate their jobs or their customers – sometimes they just want to share an unusual story. This is a community of people sharing funny stories of dining experiences or waiting experiences, if you don't like what stories people have to post, don't read.

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Jack May 12, 2010 at 3:32 pm

Someone throwing up next to me in a restaurant would not be pleasant, but it would not be the end of the world.

Look, kids get sick, sometimes at the drop of a hat. You can be out shopping and the child starts feeling bad, it happens. You can't put the child in isolation because of a tummy ache. If every kid who had a runny nose or a sour stomach was kept at home there would be few kids in public.

If you know your child is really sick, running a temp, pale color, lethargic etc. of course you keep them at home, call the doctor whatever it takes.

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Ali K June 18, 2016 at 10:31 pm

Ugh this is like 300 weeks to late, but seriously, fuck you. I would punch you in the face so hard if you were at one of my tables.
There is a special place in restaurant hell for people like you. Hopefully at a table in a restaurant full of screaming kids, cockroaches, and a server who never comes to check on you. It's a place where no matter how many times you send your soup back (because we all KNOW you're that kind of person) it will always come back cold. Your food will be under seasoned but some houligan at the table before you did that trick where he unscrewed the salt shaker a bit so you ruin your chicken Marsala, or whatever boring thing you probably like to eat. Your wine will always be corked, but you won't know it because you know nothing and you drink it anyway. And of course, to make your blood boil, an automatic 20% gratuity added to your bill.
And if you want, you can clean up the vomit from the sweet kids with the "sick tummies". You seem to have no problem with that!
Holy crap, that was mean of me. You just deserve to always eat at Arby's or something. That's about the gist of it.

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Ali K June 18, 2016 at 10:33 pm

Too*
Sorry. Typing so quickly that now I hate myself. Plus a few missed commas. I AM educated, despite what Jack thinks of us servers.

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theblonde June 21, 2016 at 12:15 pm

what really got my goat was, "you had to clean up after a child got sick. That's something parents do everyday."
That's why I'm a server, not a parent. I get that gross things can happen on the job, but that shouldn't be one of the ones that we should be expecting and have to suck up.

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Sean T February 10, 2017 at 11:28 am

You heard him, folks. Let's all go take our sick kids to Jack's place so they can hurl, upchuck, barf, vomit, chunder, blow groceries, experience an esophageal evacuation, have a tummy turnout, ralph, and whatever other cutesy name you may call it, all over him, since he says it wouldn't be a big deal.
Maybe when he's covered in the bile and puke of others he'll keep his own to himself.

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Jackisaprick September 16, 2010 at 11:37 pm

Jack do the world a favour and die so your grave can be a public toilet for waiters and waitresses you pig

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Jack September 17, 2010 at 10:49 am

Are you suggesting we live together in your mother's house?

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thoughtful January 17, 2011 at 7:32 pm

If the parents were prepared with a tub for the child to vomit in, then it is quite evident that they were of the childs condition. There is no excuse for the parents to drag a sick child to a restaurant.

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MuffinBunny May 8, 2011 at 5:25 am

@Jack:
Yes, parents do clean up after their sick children every day. But I am not a parent. I am a server and my job description does not contain anything about bodily fluids. Keep sick kids at home.

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Rachel June 1, 2011 at 2:15 am

Oh, my gawd, how do parents get to be so damn selfish. When you have a child, that child's interests come first. If your kid is sick, you stay home and take care of it. You don't drag the miserable thing to some restaurant, with an improvished barf-catcher to traumatize everyone who is eating around you with, so that you can have a fine time eating out.

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Hollanda July 23, 2012 at 4:58 pm

Kids get ill. That’s a fact. But what’s wrong with staying at home with the poor child and going out when they feel better?? Stories like this make me mad. I can tolerate the.smell of my own child’s vomit but nobody.else’s!! Why subject diners to that?!

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Tummy Troubled February 23, 2015 at 12:31 pm

I have read this post before but this is my first time commenting on it. Perhaps the couple was traveling and they were stopping to get something to eat before stopping for the night. As someone who suffers from motion sickness herself, it's possible that the child was carsick. That could also be the reason for the late time for them to go into the restaurant – traveling all day and getting something to eat before going to the hotel. Just a thought.

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Diablo January 6, 2017 at 2:05 am

If a kid says they feel sick, turn the car right back around and find something / somewhere for them to use if they throw up. Chances are, they will.

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Carla January 27, 2017 at 9:08 am

Did any of you stop to think that maybe the child is chronically ill? Possibly cancer? Maybe this is just a part of this family's everyday life.

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