At a PA restaurant it's no shirt, no shoes, no kids

Ralph and Tim are working tonight at Carmella's Casa Italiana. They make a great team. Not as cute as Ralph and Deb or Tim and Deb, but cute just the same. When the customers come in, they tease the guys and ask "Where's the girls?" I'm only there on Friday nights, and only some Friday nights at that, so I'm surprised the customers even remember there's another "girl" besides Deborah! Like I said, I'm pretty sure it's said to tease the guys, I mean the "boys." *LOL*

I was in class all day today at Manatee Memorial. It's a change of pace from my typical day, so it was fun and different. The hospital is in the process of converting it's software documentation tool to another program, so we all are taking turns going to class to learn how to use it. When the schedule was in the planning stage, management asked employees to volunteer as "super users." The super users had to agree to assist other employees, travel, work other shifts, float to other units and hospitals, work longer shifts and some weekends, and so on and so forth. You get the drift. I filled out the paper work and signed up as a super user. I was pretty excited! I think there were four volunteers from the cardiac cath lab. As time went by, most of the others felt they weren't able to fulfill the obligations of the job. The class schedule was posted and it looked like I was going to one class. I was never notified to attend any super user classes and I was wondering how a super user could be trained in one class. Well, how stupid am I? I was dropped off the list and never informed. Whatever. So, I'm a user, not a super user. Or is it vice versa? Who's really the user? So the lesson here is: when betrayed by management, don't ever lower your expectations of yourself.

Except for Tim, who is from Boston, Ralph, Deb, and I are from Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, a little town west of Philadelphia. You know Philadelphia, City of Brotherly Love, where the sports fans are the roughest in the nation and screenings at the airport are as disturbing as a trip downtown in a squad car. So, imagine my surprise when I read that the restaurant banning children under six years of age as of July 16 is located on the other side of the state in the Pittsburgh area. I thought for sure it was a Philly place! It's a casual dining establishment in Monroeville and customers apparently made numerous complaints about the crying of kids at neighboring tables. Thus the owner is instituting this new policy. Is that discrimination or a smart move? Only time will tell.

We still welcome kids of all ages at Carmella's Casa Italiana. Even when the parents say, "Oh, I'm sorry, Mary spilled something" when what Mary really did was wet her pants! YIKES Don't worry, we have lots of blue towels to clean and sanitize all surfaces...even the counter where mom laid the wet pants as she paid the bill. As I said, we're from the Philadelphia area of Pennsylvania, not the Pittsburgh area, so we aren't banning the little tykes! But we might take them downtown in a squad car. Just kidding!