A mostly fictional account of visiting a franchise restaurant
It was a confluence of unfortunate circumstances and bad judgement that led me to taking a three year-old to a suburban mall the week after Christmas.
There were things to return, a late gift to pick up, and we were catching an afternoon movie nearby. “It’ll be fun,” I had told my wife stupidly as she departed for a girls’ night. “We’ll kill some time and maybe grab dinner.”
It isn’t much later; errands having been run, movie abandoned at the halfway point, and said late gift — oversized and heavy — slung awkwardly in a ripping paper bag under my arm; that I begin to have my first pangs of doubt.
My back is starting to hurt. The mall crowds are irritating me. And my son, being three, had long stopped listening to rational suggestions.
“Buddy,” I negotiate, “maybe we don’t want to lick the escalator railing, OK?”
I shove his coat under my arm and assure myself we just need to get to a restaurant and get some food — and a drink for me — into our bellies. The food court is a no-go. We’ll never agree on something he and I will both eat and there is no chance I am lining up twice to eat. The mall is also attached to a location of The Keg but it seems like both a waste of money and an unfair thing to foist on people on weekend dates to bring a small child there.
And so to the mid-tier franchise restaurant we go.
I corral my son toward the correct escalator using a piece of candy I had found in my coat earlier that day. “There’s got to be one decent beer on tap,” I tell myself as we approach, like a fucking idiot who has never dined at a mid-tier franchise restaurant in London, Ontario.
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