A bit of a rant, pre-sorry but so sad and annoyed right now.
Went to my favorite barber shop today. It’s built on being nice, upscale, and men’s haircuts. They do the works, good cuts, beard trimming/shaping, hot towel, the whole thing, and it’s built to be man’s place, they have a pool table, they have a couple of kegerators, they’ll pour you a whiskey while you wait. Very nice.
(Note I say man’s but really if you’re a woman/any other gender and you like that sort of thing, then awesome. I mean man in the masculine sense)
Until recently this was my favorite place, but apparently it’s gotten on the mom groups online and now the last few times I’ve gone it’s just filled with children and moms. Where I could go and get a whiskey while I wait and find someone to shoot pool with, now kids are literally running around and as for the pool table they’re just throwing the balls around. Meanwhile the moms are either talking with each other or hovering over Bradley getting his hair cut and how cute it is.
On top of it all, because there was a group of them instead of my normal 20 min wait it was almost a 2 hours wait. I just walked out.
I’m just so tired of it, this place obviously was built for adults but god forbid we have any adult places that aren’t “actually meant for children”. I mean obviously it was built for children, there’s 2 kegs and a shelf of nice scotch but yes, bring all of your children here.
How come every place that used to be for adults is now a child zone? My favorite breweries used to be great places to let off steam after work and now I have kids playing tag in the middle of them. I flat out don’t go to movies anymore because even the super late showings are just dumping grounds for inattentive parents to leave their kids. And god forbid you ever mention outside a community like this that you want to drink a beer without a kid running around or you’re literally the devil who should be shunned.
Anyway, this isn’t going anywhere specifically, I’m just really sad, and I didn’t get my haircut today.
I get you. I also hate kids running around. I understand they’re kids and they don’t know better, but their moms don’t even care. That’s the problem because the kids never learn to respect other people’s space.
And if you say ANYTHING, even politely, the mother gets offended. I was once on a plane trip where I desperately needed to get sleep before driving home from the airport, and I was next to a mother who gave her son a very noisy toy. He kept banging it against the seat constantly, and I said please. I said “Could you please play quietly?” and she gets mad at me. “He’s only 6.”
Eventually the kid caught on that I had a terrible headache and quieted down, but his mother didn’t even say a word to him to ask him. I told him “Thank you for playing quietly” afterwards and ignored her.
I don’t mind a well behaved young child at a brewery during the day. But running and playing tag inside is not okay. Especially if it’s busy.
Sounds like OP has met bad parents? There are lots of them and they make shitty kids who run around like demons.
I’ve seen kids who sit quietly at a brewery coloring. They are definitely the minority but it does happen.
What happens all the time are parent who think their kid is in the well behaved minority. I have yet to meet a parent who isn’t convinced that their kid is “one of the good ones”
Hi! My kids can be holy terrors, i will admit that.
It’s why we don’t go to many places together, like shopping especially, whenever possible.
Kid friendly places are different.
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I understand your frustration. I would be very annoyed if I was in the same situation. We need adult only places that are not nfsw.
Honestly if they offered a hair cut at a strip club I’d go there just to avoid kids running around
Late stage capitalism, savage capitalism, an overcapitalized society, whatever you want to call it… It’s a bunch of different factors that all eat away at the social fabric that make raising kids easier
Housing is expensive, and people frequently move for a job. It’s pretty unusual to live next door to family, who would often give free childcare. You also don’t get neighborhoods full of young parents anymore - everyone is just living wherever they can afford to
For-profit media - thanks to decades of horror stories (of crimes that peaked in the 80s, but are great for viewership), leaving a child not in the hands of a specific, designated adult is grounds for a CPS visit in a lot of places. You can’t drop them off at the park (even if there are many adults present) or leave them at home anymore, regardless of if they actually need the supervision. It’s one thing if they’re 3, but a 7 year old can generally keep themselves alive pretty well, especially if you prepare them for it
Monetization and over scheduling - activities for them are paid and have specific time slots. Tae Kwon do is an hour at 6, soccer is 5-7… If you’re late you need to find someone to watch them. And most of that requires money and a big time investment because of car culture
Babysitters are the exception, but they’re either rare or expensive. Minimum wage isn’t near enough for teens to want to do such a crap job (parents often treat them like crap and expect a lot more from them now), and teens are less trusted. They even have certifications for teens that are a few hundred bucks to teach them what to do in an emergency - basically the heimlich maneuver, how to change a diaper, and when to call 911. Adult professionals have regulations to meet, and are a significant cost
Finally, we’re pushed hard to be individuals that can be interchangeable and portable labor. Outside of family, we don’t have the same tight bonds of friendship our parents or grandparents did… And even family doesn’t mean what it used to
Yeah, I don’t buy that humanity has drastically changed all of a sudden. It’s the circumstances that are different and we’re all paying the price.
People normally adapt to their environment. Having goals of a close social network and a tight family isn’t important to the environment of the USA (probably most of the world). This environment is to use you up and make as much money off your labor as possible with giving you as little as possible.
That doesn’t leave much left over for you to focus your energy and time to your family, friends, and social gatherings.
I mean, yeah? I just listed a bunch of circumstances
Humans are the most trainable animals we know of. The differences are due to the systems we’ve built - humans aren’t much different, but the way we organize has changed rapidly
Because mom groups are filled with awful, awful people who don’t care how their behavior affects others.
It’ll be fun! We’ll take Jayden kaiden and Brayden and go get everyone hair cuts and we’ll get a chance to catch up!
Just please take them to great clips or something
That’s just bad business sense if they allow that to continue.
Except it sounds like it is tremendously busy and probably coining in the cash.
This is the first answer in the whole chain that has made sense to me. Regardless of what type of parenting philosophy people subscribe to, businesses are going to do what makes money. It doesn’t matter what everyone thinks is right or wishes would happen.
Sometimes it’s not just about profits. Something a lot of companies could stabd to learn.
Principles don’t pay the bills
Exactly the type of comment capitalism wants you to perpetuate
They do if the principles maintain an environment your customers can tolerate, thus keeping your customer base intact instead of seeing them go somewhere that doesn’t have kids running around everywhere.
Who is bringing in more money, the people with the kids or without?
My school principal never had trouble with her bills…
There are some people whose idea of compromise is when the other party does what they say. Note: that was something explicitly said in USA politics at some point, but I honestly see it on both “sides”, and surely happens in many other places in the world as well. I’ve seen parents literally lift up urine-soaked & still dripping children from non-plastic seats, only to either not leave a tip at all or like a bare minimum 10%, while leaving ~50-fold more mess spread out everywhere than any other table in the place (and not even tell the servers about the urine, which would need special cleansers to not become embedded into the furniture). My point is that it is not the children - the innocents - it is the parents, who are inflicting their choices onto you. And I suppose the owner too, but they are customers and what, are they supposed to just turn them away? Like gentrification, they come in and you can gtfo b/c they own the place now (childification?:-P)
Oh wow, it just struck me how much your story parallels what happened on Reddit too… aside from spez’s antics, I likely would have left it anyway b/c all the children were taking over there too (they definitely are in charge of so many Discord servers). You can fight back (talk to the owner), or you can leave (maybe there is a place to get a haircut inside of a place of employment, where children are less likely to visit? or perhaps if you travel further away?), but definitely pick your battles b/c the kids, and more importantly their parents, aren’t going to disappear anytime soon - if anything, the sort that you are talking about seem to be getting bolder all the time.:-( Maybe this is why people go to country clubs, to filter them out?
Meh. It’s one thing to not like children, but here this seems to have been your real problem:
my normal 20 min wait it was almost a 2 hours wait. I just walked out.
We, uh… live in a society. You don’t get to feel entitled to be served at an advantage over other people. We all have to share all these natural resources and the labor of all these workers. But more people is not a bad thing. What’s next, you gonna complain that all these immigrants are clogging up the line to the drive through, or that all these old people are making you wait long time at the doctor’s office? Everyone is entitled to life. And in truth more people means more workers means more benefit to you and everyone on average.
Yes, you feel that this barber shop in particular was targeted towards adult audience with its shave service and whiskey bar, but apparently all those moms saw something useful in that service too, and more importantly they were all willing to pay for it. If this shop was so exclusive and upscale, then how could those kids even afford it? Yet they are customers too apparently.
I feel that way too sometimes, like when going to the movies - if I pay $20 for a ticket, how can all those kids in front of me cough up the money, when I remember paying $5 per movie as a kid myself? And yet they paid too, so we are all in there together. If I really didn’t want to share space with other people, I could go look for a $50 movie theater with individual “bedroom” cubicles. As could you. You could outspend all those kids and find an even more exclusive and expensive barber service, by appointment-only. I’m gonna tolerate the kids and keep my money. 😂
Stone restaurant and brewery added an array of chicken tendies and there’s kids climbing all over the rocks.
The struggle is real.
Because most people have children eventually. The rest of us are in the minority. Businesses want as much patronage as possible, so they don’t target us.
I have two kids- 7 and 8. Sometimes I want to get away from them (and everyone else’s kids too). If I had a spot like you described and it got co-opted I’d be pissed.
Ultimately it’s up to whoever owns the business though. I’m guessing the two hour waits mean more money for the business owner and barbers that work there.
The only truly adults only spaces are bars (like a bar, bar. Not the damn brewery restaurant) and nightclubs.
They suck in other ways without having children running amok, tho.
I hate that breweries have changed to family restaurants. Because all of the family restaurants weren’t enough, they had to come for breweries too.
I mean, most people are going to raise kids at some point in their life.
I entirely get people who don’t have kids around wanting to have establishments with “no kids” rules. That’s great, nothing wrong with having an establishment that caters to them. But I also think that people who have kids should have options that cater to them as well, should be some establishments in the industry that do the same for them.
Right, like almost every other barber shop in the country. This was one barber shop out of dozens around me that are all labeled as “family friendly”, but this is still the one they chose to come to.
I hear this argument a lot but the fact is that most places are family friendly, but when a restaurant wants to be explicitly adult only it makes national news.
You were talking about breweries rather than barber shops.
Actually you replied to OP who was certainly talking about a barber shop.
Not in the comment I responded to, he wasn’t.
As someone who has kids, it’s a fucking Act of Congress to get child care. I wouldn’t trust my parents to watch a potted plant, and her parents really aren’t interested in the whole grandparent thing. Hiring a babysitter is both sketchy and expensive, and asking a friend is awkward since
- most of our friends are nokids and/or not super comfortable around kids and our kids were deeply blessed by the ADHD fairy and have never met a stranger in their whole lives. And
- We don’t see our friends often, so “hey, wanna come over and watch our crazy heathens try to beat the shit out of each other every 3.5 seconds?” Is kind of a hard sell.
So, it’s just easier to take them everywhere, and if we can’t take them, we don’t go.
Ah, so just to recap, you chose to have kids, they made socializing difficult, and now everyone else has to deal with your “crazy heathens”.
These are reasons why people choose not to have kids, not reasons to justify ruining other people’s times because you decided to have kids and it had predictable outcomes.
The question asked, I answered. To be clear, we didn’t specifically sit down and plot to make you and other people miserable when we decided to have kids. Also, we don’t let them run wild, which usually results in us just leaving because they’re going to start melting down over not being able to go harass strangers who just want to be left alone. Besides that, we try to avoid adultier venues, but sometimes shit happens. When I say we normally don’t go unless we can take them, the emphasis is on the ‘we normally don’t go’. We kinda figured that the grandparents would at least be able to help, as has been the case for millennia, but it turned out that my mom has all the parenting skills of a pair of scissors and her parents want almost nothing to do with it. I’ll save you the sob story and just say that it’s been fucking difficult, and sometimes it feels like my brain is going to melt out of my ears; we’re not fucking sitting around laughing about ruining your night out, and that’s even if we do go out, which we usually don’t.
Maybe take them to kid oriented places at first until they learn how to handle themselves around others.
Chuck E. Cheese, McDonalds playland, etc.
Then your Denny’s, Chillis, Marie Callendars, Applebees
Then nicer places if they dont cause problems.
We try to avoid adultier places if we can help it, but sometimes there’s no helping taking your kid to the DMV and just having to get your shit chewed out by the security guard. In general, though, we just avoid unnecessary trips out.
Bro… children are a part of life, unfortunately you gotta get used to that
It’s not like op is asking for adult only playgrounds.
Which is why I go out of my way to niche places that don’t have as many kids, I am inconveniencing myself to go to these niche places. There are a dozen other barber shops closer to me I could go to but I went to this one farther away because it had an adult vibe.
Even when I go out of my way to try to find the one place that fits me mom groups still push their way in.
That’s why I dislike this argument. I go to the one of 30ish barber shops around me because I wanted that atmosphere without kids and I’m still demonized because “kids are a part of life”. To me that comes off as "I know there are 29 others I could take my kids to, but you’re a bad person for not wanting kids at the only one that doesn’t cater to them "
