Last week Nicole Marie was waitressing at the Red Dog Saloon in Michigan, where she has worked on and off for the last ten years. During the course of her shift, she saw a scenario unfold that, she says, restored her faith in the future.
Nicole took to Facebook to share the story and a photo that illustrated her tale. The post seems to have struck a chord as it has been shared nearly eleven thousand times. Here is what Nicole said:
Today my faith in future generations was restored!! I had 7, 6th grade boys come in while I was working, and they wanted to order wings. They asked if they had enough money to cover 40 wings and pops. I looked around confused- wondering where their parents were. I asked if they were alone and they said ‘yes’ and we’ve been looking forward to this for weeks! They were so excited and were EXTREMELY polite the whole entire time, using ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and trying to make it as easy as possible for me to get their order; they even told me they’d tip well 😂.
One of the boys even told his friend to get off the phone when I was talking to them! It was so heartwarming to see how much they were trying, especially when there were no parents around to scold them if they weren’t on their best behavior.
They were so good that a neighboring customer ended up picking up their tab and telling them to pay it forward! I just wanted to give big props to the parents of these boys- keep doing what you’re doing!!
Pictured is how they left the table! Even grown adults (myself included) rarely leave the table this clean!
When Grown and Flown reached out to Nicole she told us that,
The big things that stuck out to me was the one boy telling his friend to get off his phone and the neighboring table paying for their (the boys) tab. She (the woman who paid their tab) told them to make sure they pay it forward and that she was impressed with their excellent behavior. I do know that their parents weren’t sure how they’d actually behave.
As the mother of three sons, I can attest to the fact that we parents work very hard to civilize our teens. We tell them over and over to be polite, to say “please” and “thank you,” and we remind them continuously to clean up after themselves. We tell them to make eye contact with people when they speak to them and we implore them to put their phones down, at least once in a while.
But we can’t help but wonder whether or not anything we say is getting through. It’s refreshing and heartening to hear that sometimes not only have our kids they hear us, they actually have put what we tell them into practice.
In a world in which bad behavior grabs headlines, Nicole is obviously not the only one who thought that the boys’ behavior was refreshing, note-worthy and deserving of praising. It’s nice to see that for the most part we we say sinks in, and left to their own devices our kids are good, really, really good.
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