Other than THAT, Mrs. Lincoln, How Did You Enjoy The Play?

I was supposed to meet an old friend for dinner tonight, but the friend was sick and we postponed until next week. But I'd already set aside this time, so I decided I'd still go out to eat by myself for some peace and quiet.  Boy was I wrong.  The restaurant I went to must have had "Kids Run Wild" night because that's what they did.  Kids were running all over the place like a tribe of wild Apache Indians.  I can tune out quite a bit but I wasn't able to tune out all of the drama and running around tonight.  At one point, one of the wild kids even grabbed my purse.  Yes, you read correctly - grabbed my beloved Prada purse. It was sitting in the chair next to me at my table and so help me, the little PAT-in-training grabbed it.  In a split second I grabbed it back from the kid, and was just about ready to smack his parents when one of the waitresses came up.  Talk about good timing on the parents' part, because there was no telling what I was going to do. I asked if I could speak to the manager. And the parents didn't even seem to care that their kid - just one of about half a dozen running wild in the restaurant - grabbed my purse.  The two punks just sat there in their booth, texting on their phones and probably updating their Facebook page.   

In about two minutes, a 30-something guy sauntered over to my table that had on a little name tage that said "manager" and I told him what had happened.  I also said that the assistant police chief of that area was a friend of mine, and I would not hesitate to call him to report my purse being grabbed by a juvenile.  He looked at me like I had three heads.  I told him "You need to do something about this crap going on in your restaurant or else get ready for a lot of phone calls."

I was livid as I left the place.  Here I had hoped to have a nice dinner by myself, with some peaceful Me Time but that most certainly did not happen.  I don't even need to tell you that I will never go back to this restaurant, and I will tell everyone I come in contact with about this incident in hopes that they, too, will not go back. This restaurant has already been on the local news and in the newspaper a couple of months ago for some identity and credit card theft;  this probably won't happen but I hope they go out of business.