Restaurants need to do more than just banning the kids

Finally some restaurants are putting down their feet to ban kids once and for all. No matter how unfair it may sound to parents, this is actually a very good news for those of us who are not parents. Especially to the couples who have decided not to have any noisy runabout kids in their houses and yet have to go to restaurants full of them.

But then again, some may find this as another case of what the Chinese says "bringing down the whole boat of refugees with a bamboo stick". While most kids are expected to run around the floor in top speed at the top of their voices, there are also kids that will sit down and shut up and eat. For example those who are brought up by drill sergeant dads and discipline mistress moms, and taught to put up their hands before speaking at a dining table. So I agree it'll be rather unfair to these disciplined kids.

So perhaps the restaurants should not reject the kids right at the door, but give them a chance to prove their innocence? Perhaps they could adopt the soccer penalty system where the servers are authorised to present a kid with a yellow card upon inappropriate behavior, and if the kid receives two yellow cards, he or she would be asked to leave the restaurant. And of course that will mean the whole family has to go. Too harsh? What are you expecting? Even for the Singapore Lions, the whole team has to go! Oh... except for the coach in this case...

Actually I reckon the restaurants have more items on their To-do list other than just banning the kids if they really want to make our dining experience enjoyable, or at least bearable. After getting rid of our kids, the restaurants should make these changes themselves as well:

• Ban the handphones. A yelling kid will eventually stop yelling when he or she is tired, but a uncle or aunty can go on and on and on...


• Put up partitions to divide up large tables from the smaller tables. We are actually not interested in the gossips and catch-ups among a table of ex-classmates/ex-colleagues/ex-whatever. And we really don't have to join in their birthday songs.


• Widen the space between tables. Before we can start ordering and eating, we do need to get to our tables. And some restaurants seem to be hinting to us that we need to go on a diet before we can get to our tables. And when we finally managed to squeeze through the gaps, it can be really uncomfortable listening to a chap trying to hook up with a gal or watching the other one all over his gal's hands.


• Give us some water. We have already got desalination plants, Marina Barrage and floods so we have got more than enough water to go around and the price of water is going to remain cheap. So give us our iced or warm tap water! If we really like to have a glass of wine or juice, we will still order it on top of the free iced water, you moron!