People with children sometimes struggle to understand people who choose to not have kids. A few even take it way too far, seeing it as the responsibility of the entire universe to go out of its way and assist them with the choices they have made.

One netizen recounted a story they read from a mother who deeply and truly believed that a waiter was out of line for asking her to clean up after her son. Commenters debated the woman’s deep-seated entitlement and hypocrisy, while also discussing how undervalued and overworked service staff often are.

Some people take the “service” part of “service staff” too literally

Image credits: Tirachard (not the actual photo)

One entitled mom posted a rant about a waiter not wanting to pick up the food her son threw on the floor

Image credits: crystalsing (not the actual photo)

Image credits: Pressmaster (not the actual photo)

Image credits: DonSmo

Some people seem to believe the entire world revolves around them

While entitled people come in all shapes and sizes, there is a subset of parents who believe the act of having a child sets them apart, like the mother in OP’s story. For the sake of readability, OP will refer to the mom, not the person who later uploaded the story. While this is deeply illogical, since the entire human race exists due to multiple sets of people all having kids, entitlement is generally not a rational emotion. While it might be hard for a new mother to bend down and pick up after a messy kid, it’s very unclear why the woman in this post didn’t just ask her husband to help.

Instead, she demanded that a generally underpaid worker get down and pick up a mess he did not make. The mess, not incidentally, was caused by something OP did make, but this point seems to have escaped her. Even worse, her attitude reveals that she thought he had to clean up. Entitlement is particularly ugly because the person can’t even graciously accept something, they simply act like they deserve it. So to OP, this waiter stooping down and cleaning up an absurd mess would be just the natural order of things.

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To state the obvious, we do need to cut parents and mothers some slack. When a baby is crying in an airplane or some other public place, there is often little the parents can do. The baby doesn’t know any better and tends to not share a language with which it can be reasoned with. Similarly, learning to eat is an important part of growing up, even if it might cause a decent amount of food waste. However, the parents could have simply done most of their “training” at home and not tried to outsource cleaning to someone else.

OP’s hypocritical tirade reveals a lot about just how entitled she feels she is

The rant OP posted after describing the event is the most telling part. She seems to believe that asking her to help clean up (again, where is the father in all of this) is somehow a punishment for having a child. If this mess was too much for her, she had better grow some thicker skin, since kids can get up to quite a lot. She then goes on to describe all the other ways her child has made a mess and her own surprise that people were annoyed. Peeing in the library, for example, which she hand-waves away like it’s something that happens all the time. While an airplane can be forgiven, as people need to get around, why exactly was she taking a baby into a library? It’s akin to the people who bring children into movie theaters and expect everything to be fine.

“Why do we only support when we relate?” she asks, missing the part where she neither related nor supported the waiter. She then talks about people’s exclusivity complex, ignoring the fact that, apparently, she has repeatedly made other people suffer for her choices. This is where the line from overwhelmed mother to entitled person is crossed. Somehow, in a line that is nearing parody, she says that “The kind of community I want Bryn to see is one where we all work together,” which would make sense if she actually helped anyone but herself throughout the entire story.

A few readers discussed the question with OP

Others shared their shock and similar stories

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