Here's to the Ladies Who Lunch

Last week I went to lunch with some friends in the city. We went to Max Brenner's Chocolates By the Bald Man in my old Village stomping grounds. There were four of us and I was the first to arrive. The restaurant was pretty empty but even so, since I was the first to arrive, I informed the hostess that I would be joined by three friends and that we each would have a baby with us. She asked if we needed four highchairs. I said no that most of them were too little for high chairs we'd just have our strollers. She said fine and so I waited. Five minutes later Heidi showed up with Maddy. Five minutes after that Alicia showed up with Sheldon. Alicia then went to hostess again to let her know that we had one more friend coming and she would need a high chair. So there are the three of us with our strollers and a little while later the manager comes out to the empty dining room floor and says, "You can't eat here. We can't have all of these strollers here." I went on the war path. So I push up to the front of our group and say quite forcefully, "I spoke with your hostess 10-15 minutes ago and apprised her of the situation with our group why wasn't I informed of this problem then??" Then the hostess freaks out that she's going to get reamed and says, "I'm not the manager I didn't know it was a problem." But the manager saw my angry face and miraculously realized that it wasn't a problem at all. The strollers tuck right under the tables like a chair. I was so mad though. What if we were a support group for people married to quadriplegics? Are you not going to allow four wheelchairs in your establishment? My friend Addy said we should have told them they were discriminating based on age disability. I'm keeping that in mind for the next time someone gets an attitude. "You know age is a protected status and you realize that you are denying service based on my son's inability to sit upright by himself." Suck it stuck up Manhattan restaurants. I'm an educated housewife with time on her hands. I'll make your life hell. Good thing he decided to seat us.

So here we are at the restaurant when they finally allowed us to give them our money.

Sheldon sampled extensively from the menu.

Maddy preferred to wear her lunch, or her mom's lunch as it were.

This is the nicest employee at the restaurant. Too bad he wasn't our waiter.

Here is poor Beckett tuckered out after helping me right the world's wrongs. Our lunch counter sit in will go down in history.....or it would have if I didn't get a seat. Regardless, I'm never going back there. I can buy overpriced chocolate any number of places in Manhattan.