Today my husband, 3 yo and 2 yo twins went for lunch in a small local cafe that we go to maybe once a month. It's quite informal and I took the pile of kids toys as an indication that families were welcome. The twins were fractious and hungry, and having a bit of a shout, but we ordered food and waited for them to settle. There were about two other tables of people in there at this time.
After we ordered the owner made a comment along the lines of 'give it a rest now kids' which I took as a joke, then about 5 minutes later, after the children's food had arrived, but before my husbands and mine had he came over and said,'your going to have to stop them making this noise, they are disturbing everyone else lunch. It's just not on.'
So, my husband ate a bit of his lunch then took the twins to sit in the car while I picked at mine. Just after he left a lovely lady on the table next to us came over to say she'd heard what he said and was disgusted and wanted me to know she hadn't complained to him about the noise, and that she planned to say something to him when she left. I'm ashamed to say that I was so embarrassed and stressed that this made me cry.
As I went to pay my £30 bill for the mostly uneaten food, he asked me if everything had been ok?! I said I was mortified by what he'd said. He got all chippy and defensive about it so I didn't say anymore.
It has ruined what should have been a lovely day. Twins aren't easy and I am very conscious if not impacting on other people negatively, but this place gives the impression of being child friendly, and we weren't letting them run wild or anything like that.
So what do you think, was he out of line or should we have left sooner? It was a terrible mortifying experience.