Ball Teams in Restaurants

Every summer here in the Midwest, and maybe in your neck of the woods as well, there is a phenomena known as youth ball teams.  Organized groups of young boys and girls are signed up to learn the fundamentals of the game as well as good sportsmanship, respect, teamwork, practice, and dependability.  They play other organized teams in their area and at the end of the season, there is a big tournament.  Sometimes, teams from other areas travel here to play in this tournament.  The tournament is an all day affair, sometimes an all weekend affair, with winners of games playing winners of other games and the losers going home in defeat.  Now, being an all day event with the possibility of a short turn around between games, I would think that the families of the players would arrive at the ball park with a game plan for lunch.  A cooler stashed in the car with the makings for a picnic perhaps?  Cleverly locating where the nearest sandwich shop or fast food joint is?  Bringing enough cash to purchase concessions from the ball park itself?  Instead, all too often, I see entire teams and their families decend on a casual dining restaurant with a limited amount of time to spend for lunch.  The first person to arrive usually has no idea how many people are in their party which makes it difficult, if not impossible, to determine where to seat them.  No one ever over estimates how many people are in the party so if the table is set up to seat 30, invariably 36 will show up and the last to arrive will be outraged that the restaurant didn't set up enough seats and will demand that another table of customers be moved to accomodate them because they're IN A HURRY!  The kids almost always sit away from their parents.  This, by itself, is not a problem since the parents usually identify their offspring by their jersey number.  However, their kids will often order something that the parents don't want them to have and when it arrives, they will verbally berate the server.  It never occurs to them that the server has no idea what the kid is allowed or not allowed to have.  What is common in one family is not common in another.  It takes some time to take the orders of 30 plus people, more time than it takes for a table of 4 and it takes more time to ring them in as well as for the kitchen to prepare all those orders.  Usually, even before the last order is taken, someone from the table very irritably demands to know how much longer it's going to take to get their food, because they're IN A HURRY!  As the servers are desperatly trying to ring in all this food, another parent will come up to the computer to complain that their kid has had an empty drink for the last five minutes.  They don't mention that their kid chugged the drink as soon as it was set in front of them.  They probably don't know this since they're sitting at the other end of the table.  (Here's a fun fact about kid sized drinks: Those colorful kid cups look to be about half the size of adult drinks, but most of them are actually 12 oz. while adult drinks are only 16 oz.  A 4 oz. difference which is in fact only half a cup.  Now you know why your kid won't eat his meal after downing two or three drinks.)  Finally the table gets their food and, of course, someone complains because they didn't know their order had tomatos or guacamole or cheese or something else that is very clearly stated in the menu.  But, since they're IN A HURRY, they can't afford to wait for something else to be made so they sit and loudly complain about what a horrible restuarant this is and they didn't want to come here anyway.  Last, but not least, is the seperate check fiasco.  Seperate checks are not a problem in most cases.  Ball teams are not most cases.  Trying to get the right kid on the right ticket, dealing with the parent who doesn't want to pay for the chocolate shake that junior ordered and drank, removing the order that had the offending tomato, guac, cheese, etc. on it, running multiple credit cards, making change for the cash payers, including the guy who only has a $100 bill for his $9 ticket and is IN A HURRY, all take time.  We're talking about dealing with money here.  After the team has cleared out, all too often the servers discover that they've been left a stingy tip or no tip at all.  The parents seem to think that the restaurant is thrilled to have their business.  Yes and no.  Yes, they're happy to have any business, but weekends are already busy for most places and if the lot is full of multiple cars for one group, other customers will go somewhere else.  No favors are being done here.  It ends up being a stressful situation for everyone. Remember those lessons in good sportsmanship and respect?  Kids will copy what they see their parents do.  People behaving badly.