Have you ever taken a child to one of those family friendly kids pizza restaurant and they won’t let you leave with your child? Can you believe that this could and does happen? It has happened to my family.
When we went into the restaurant we were expecting a day of family fun, playing games and a pizza dinner. We all walked in got all the same stamps on our hands showing we were in the same group. No one questioned us when we were on our way in to the restaurant. The situation totally changed when we were done playing, eating and ready to go home.
The employee at the door let families in front of us leave without questioning them; they opened the door for them and told them to have a nice day. When it was our turn she would not let us leave with our kids. We had three children with us; they were smiling, holding our hands and they are the same three kids that we had when we walked in. The employee did not check our matching hand stamps; the only thing that she looked at was that one of the children had a different skin color than the rest of us. Maybe I could have understood if the child in question was yelling stranger danger or help you are not my mommy, but he was smiling.
If the only difference in our family was that we all had red hair and then one of the kids had black hair would we be questioned then? Were we the only the family that ever came to this restaurant and everyone did not match? Does no one bring other people’s children to the restaurant? Would they be questioned as well?
Well if you know me you would know that I am not the type of person to let this go without saying something. While we were there waiting to go I very nicely stuck our hands under the special light so she could see the stamps match and told her to look. When she said ok and opened the door I had my husband take the kids out to the car while I waited for the manager.
The manager was very apologetic but still the fact that this happened was truly insulting to me. I may have left it at the store level if when I got to the car my son was asking why the lady said that he was not our child, OH yeah she said that, I could not let it go.
I called the corporate office and reported the situation, and they were shocked by the employee’s behavior. The person was sent to sensitivity classes and we got lots of free tokens and pizza’s. We did not use the certificates because I did not want to take him back there and have to worry about it happening again.