Saturday 26 March 2011

Neither seen nor heard

Following my rant here, I started a poll asking the question “Should children be barred from drinking areas of pubs?” There were 92 responses, broken down as follows:

Yes: 57 (62%)
No: 35 (38%)

So roughly a 3:2 split there. Bear in mind that the poll was purely referring to drinking areas – the issue of children in dining areas, where their presence is arguably more legitimate, is a rather different one. It remains my view that the widespread admittance of children to bar areas of pubs is a major deterrent to adult pubgoers – it only takes one bad experience to put you off from going somewhere ever again. But, of course, if you complain about it, you will be painted as a evil child-hating bastard.

7 comments:

  1. As a smoker, outside in the more clement weather, the beer garden is more like a kindergarten.

    Put 'em in the nursery!

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  2. Then the parents whinge at you for blowing smoke in the faces of their darling sprogs. And the response of "wtf else am I supposed to smoke?" doesn't go down too well.

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  3. To both anons:

    1. I've never seen behaviour like that in beer gardens (and I go to a lot of pubs), so I think you're both exaggerating.

    2. Given my previous point, is that why you're both anonymous?

    Although, anon 2, if you do say WTF to a parent in front of their kids, I can see why it wouldn't go down well.

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  4. You evil child-hating bastard:)

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  5. it only takes one bad experience to put you off from going somewhere ever again. But, of course, if you complain about it, you will be painted as a evil child-hating bastard.

    Days after posting my previous comment about this - where I said I had been annoyed by kids in pubs, but I couldn't remember when - I was severely annoyed by some kids in the local Spoons, particularly one toddler who seemed to be intent on screaming and screaming until [s]he was sick. (This was a weeknight - Curry Night, to be precise. The words 'babysitter' and 'too cheap for' come to mind.)

    That was a bad experience all right - ruined my pint. Has it put me off going to the local Spoons ever again? Don't be daft.

    So I'll rephrase your comment: if it only takes one bad experience to put you off from going somewhere ever again, then people are likely to think you've got a problem with children in general, & hence to call you a evil child-hating bastard.

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  6. "if it only takes one bad experience to put you off from going somewhere ever again"

    If it was a local pub I was likely to revisit, and I thought it might be an isolated incident, I might give it another chance. But, on a slightly different subject, I vividly remember several occasions outside the local area where I received either disgusting food or appallingly slow food service, and were I ever to find myself in those areas again I would certainly think twice before visiting those particular establishments.

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  7. My name is Paul and I'm an evil child-hating bastard. :-)

    ReplyDelete

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