OK, I am sure some will flame me for having been a bit useless in this situation myself...
So, just been to a caff I really like with a friend who is visiting town. It's my birthday, she had hers last week, and we decided to treat ourselves.
It tends to be quite busy, but as we were having a catch up and got a nice table we were fine with that and were having a nice time chatting and entertaining my 9 month old. We popped her in the high chair and put her at the table so she could have some food while we waited(she feeds herself, mainly).
Anyway, when the waitress arrived, it turned out I'd ordered the wrong thing for my friend. At the moment she mentioned it, the waitress put my coffee down... right on front of my baby. Who immediately put her hand straight into it. There was a bit of a kerfuffle, as I grabbed the baby's hand and was checking her over/panicking, at which point the waitress just walked right off. My friend followed her to sort out her drink, and assumed she was upset because of her thoughtlessness, so re-assured her that she though my daughter was ok, luckily.
She came back 5 minutes later, and put a large teapot of boiling water... where? You guessed it, in front of my baby. In the wink of an eye she had it by the handle and poured it all over the floor and herself. Thank Christ she only got a small splash on her leg.
Anyway, once I had dealt with that (running cold water etc) a very kind lady came over who had recently done her first aid for kids, and helped me check her over to make sure she was really ok. At which point the waitress came over, and essentially, in a fairly belligerent manner, proceeded to say that basically they were very busy, she was very stressed, and where else what she supposed to put it? I was still kind of in shock at this point, so the nice lady shepherded me away, partly I think to get away from this.
5 minutes later she came over again, and it was clear she had been sent to apologise despite still feeling she had done nothing at all wrong. She said we shouldn't have had my daughter pushed up to the table anyway. It didn't go well.
My point is, I think, that we were not shouting the odds, or being horrible to her. We have both waitressed, and we do understand that mistakes and accidents happen. It was her attitude that got to me. Not once did she ask if my daughter was ok, not once did she really apologise, or take on board what we were saying- which really was just that perhaps in future she could not put boiling liquids right in front of a baby.
I feel awful, too, that I assumed that she wouldn't put a hot drink near my baby, it just hadn't occurred to me in a million years that anyone would do something like that. I won't ever make that mistake again.
We did have a chat with the manager afterwards as I felt we'd got nowhere with her, and we wanted to make sure they spoke to their staff so it wouldn't happen again to anyone else. He dealt with it really well and refunded us as we just wanted to leave after that.
Sorry for the long post. It's been a couple of hours now, and I'm actually shaking again. I feel as though if I see her again I'll explode... but I think it's just the adrenaline. It could have been so, so serious. 