Who is being U cafe owner or family?

[Hotcrossscotcheggs]

On my FB tonight a story came up and has been shared a LOT about a family who visited a cafe and ordered their food to then be asked to leave as their 3 year old was upset they also mentioned that 3 year old has additional needs.
The page of the cafe has been flooded with 1 star bad reviews since of people who haven't visited but thought the treatment of the family was horrendous.
The cafe then responded and said that they too have a lively 3 year old daughter/grandaughter and understand children can be loud and that this is fine. They also said that they didn't ask the family to leave just asked if they could get the children to simmer down a little as other customers had complained. They also said the mother left and said "I will ruin you".

I'm not sure how I feel about the whole situation having a nephew with asd and a boisterous 20 month old i understand how difficult eating out can be with kids however this lady's business has been totally slated online and the cafe has had 60+ bad reviews since the post was shared. I'm not sure both parties ate being 100% honest with thrir accounts of what happened.

Who do you think was being unfair?

Customers complain about loud out of control child in cafe. Owner asks parent to control child. Parent kicks off and threatens to ruin cafe's business. Parent tells lies on facebook.

I know where my sympathies lie. If I lived locally I'd show my support by visiting the cafe.

The screaming was actually really upsetting some of the dogs, which ruined their run. The child also would run up to dogs and grab at them, despite owners asking the parents not to let the child grab their dogs. The organisers ended up asking the family to leave, and the mother started yelling that it was discrimination and that they should allow her child to 'have a go'.

And of course if the child had been allowed to “have a go” and hurt themselves in the process it would have been the organisers’ fault not the mother’s!

I rather suspect it was not one small shriek as described. No cafe owner is going to speak to a family about that, nor is a customer going to complain if that was true. More likely is a prolonged period of poor behaviour without an attempt from the parents to control of. Obviously if there are additional needs then that makes things difficult but the cafe owner is not going to know that and for the parents to threaten to ruin the business because of that is vile.

I suspect there is an amount of he said she said on both sides of this but as it has been presented here I would be supportive of the cafe owner. Can't stand the disgusting mob mentality of leaving masses of 1 star reviews.

"Sadly, when you have a disabled child there are things you simply have to resign yourself to not being able to do. Eating out is usually one of them."

This was a cafe not sitting for hours in a fine dining restaurant. I would absolutely expect to take my severely disabled child to a cafe and I would expect the noises that go with that level of disability to be tolerated.
We don't know whether the case in question was a child running around shouting or a child just 'being' so loud repetitive noises etc. If it was the latter then I would be angry and would tell others about it although I don't do Facebook sharing.

This is local to me and I've seen the posts and saw the owners replies to reviews and they were pretty awful.

What I don't agree with is the nearly 100 people who put 1 star reviews on after reading a Facebook post. You shouldn't review something based on hearsay.

I imagine we will never know the truth but I'd be nervous taking my sometimes noisy 3 year old in, mainly as he gets hungry very quickly and when he's hungry he's hangry!

I know the family involved. I think the mum will be totally mortified at how this has all kicked off. She was upset at her family's treatment and left a poor review- which she is well within her rights to do. I doubt she would have expected it to go nuts in the way it has.

If you read some of the cafe owner's replies to poor reviews on Trip Advisor, you can see that Customer Relations is an area for development...

The kids are gorgeous, they really are.

Yes I saw the original posts, dad described it as 'one small shriek when she saw food going to another table instead of hers'. I would bet my house a cafe owner who wants to make a profit wouldn't even say anything about 'one small shriek'!

Thing is, there'll be lots of people who want to show their support after this and the ones threatening to boycott likely aren't constant regulars either. So I actually think this will do the cafe good.

This is the problem with reviews, they can be used to just be vindictive. Maybe the cafe owners didn't handle it very well but they don't deserve to be vilified by people who've never even been there.

The children must have been kicking off pretty badly for the cafe to have had words.

I sympathise with anyone who's child has 'additional needs' but it can't be a carte blanche for any behaviour having to be accepted. My sibling has autism and that meant as a family there were just a lot of things we couldn't do,we didn't take that out on other people.

So to me the mother is BU and vindictive.

It’s absolutely fine for the family to leave a review of their visit- good, or bad.

However, if people who have never visited the cafe are leaving bad reviews in solidarity, or have been encouraged to, then that really needs looking into because it’s malicious slander.

I know the family involved. I think the mum will be totally mortified at how this has all kicked off. She was upset at her family's treatment and left a poor review- which she is well within her rights to do. I doubt she would have expected it to go nuts in the way it has.

Really? So she didn't leave saying "I will ruin you" then, the cafe owners made that up?

Well she's created a shit storm which could put someone out of business. Unless the owner came at her 3 year old with a knife I don't think how 'badly she was treated' is worth that is it.

If she's that mortified maybe she should retract her original review and write something in response to the others who've come out in her support.

@TossDaily that's interesting you say the mother would be mortified at what's happened but I have to wonder what exactly she expected? The kids may well be gorgeous but that doesn't mean the family weren't at fault here. It really does seem that it's been blown out of proportion, and the most likely scenario imo is that the family are embarrassed and trying to deflect that. I really don't believe that any business owner is going to throw a family out of their business for one small noise, the story presented by the parents seems quite implausible.

Feel really sorry for small businesses who are so vulnerable to this kind of mob attack - the whipped up bored masses are so pathetic but potentially quite damaging.

Why shouldn't someone leave a honest review?

No problem with leaving an honest review if you've actually been there. And if the review is honest.

There are three local cafes on my local High St.

One of them is well known for the owner being totally intolerant of kids, of any description.

That particular café is always busy and tables are always hard to get. The service is impeccable, the food excellent, the décor pristine.

The other 2 cafes welcomes kids. The service is poor, the food is kidified crap and the décor shabby.

The kid free café has been trading for years, with one family owning and running it.The other 2 cafes/kindergartens are always changing ownership. One of them changed ownership a couple weeks ago. The new owners are having a refurb and a new menu - hopefully it will not be so kid tolerant and lay down some dining bounderies. If not, then it will soon close down. Again.

I always look in a café window, and if I see kids then I look elsewhere.

DS is autistic. We have had problems when out and if we can’t settle him within a few minutes we leave - for one it’s not fair on him to leave him in the situation when distressed.

One of the biggest triggers from him to start to struggle is certainly other people though and things like children running around and being noisy are massive triggers for him.

We pick where we go carefully but sadly you can’t pick who the other customers will be!

"He has full time carers and is obviously seriously mentally impaired. He can’t help it."

He would have been a young child once with the same behaviour and may well have been viewed as badly behaved by others. I think it is less clear cut at 3 but my son is 11 now so his behaviour is disability related but I still get the glares.

This is why this whole name and shame on social media has just gone too far. The general public just have to do their daily mail faces, post a sob story on Facebook and they can ruin a business purely because they didn't get their own way

The thing is no one knows what's going on in anyone else's life. Maybe there was another child in the cafe who cannot tolerate sudden loud noises or screaming. Maybe an adult had just had bad news.

Whose needs are more important? We all have to live on this planet but should do so with consideration to others and their needs as well as our own.

It's totally unreasonable to review a cafe you have never been to. If these are all friends of the family being encouraged to do it, rather than trolls, then the family are colossally unreasonable to encourage it. One bad review for one bad experience is plenty. If there is a pattern to the behaviour, then more people will give similar, honest reviews. Flooding the page with vitriolic reviews following one experience just shows how unpleasant some people are. If people like that are not visiting the cafe, then all's good!

I saw this too. How can anyone comment who wasn't there. Really unpleasant situation. If it's the same story- I've been to the cafe and always had super service.

Sharron, yes

I hate vindictive reviews left by people who have not even visited the place!

Saying that, tripadvisor and Amazon and FB reviews are increasingly worthless now so I often disregard them.

I read and stick my reviews on TripAdvisor to avoid Facebook shit storms. I've only had to do one bad one but I wasn't going to not do it because it might effect their business. If I am taking my son somewhere I want to know about poor attitudes to children like mine - and also good ones.

I can't believe so many MN'ers know this cafe!
None of this is going to end well, is it?
Did the mum really say 'I'm going to ruin you'?