Okay, it’s not really an epidemic, but by alarmist media standards it’s practically a pandemic. An italicized pandemic.
If you didn’t see it in the news, there were three incidents in the past few weeks were toddlers got schwasted in sucky mass-feeding trough chains like Applebee’s, Chili’s and Olive Garden when their sippy cups were refilled with cocktails masquerading as chocolate milk or juice . (And I shall pause to point out that isn’t that in and of itself kind of gross because who knows if people actually wash their kids’ stuff very thoroughly at home?)
Anyway, none of the kids suffered ill-effects, but at least one became belligerent and talked loudly, which is kinda funny. And since consumer-stuff is sorta their thing, Consumerist managed to find out why this happened three times in the period of a few weeks that we know about. It turns out, it’s not at all an uncommon occurrence, and here’s why:
Several people who work in these types of restaurants say that servers often help themselves to “happy juice” – make alcoholic drinks and put them in sippy cups so they can drink on the job.”
“I’ve worked for a few years in restaurants and both: servers and bartenders using sippy cups to hide their own booze is a routine mode of operation. The type of work most of these people do is both long (10-12 hours per day) and rather stressful. Many combat this by abusing alcohol, some start drinking as early as noon on a weekday.”
Sound plausible? Have you seen servers supping sangria from Handy Manny cups behind the scenes? If you were serving Poppin’ Jalapeno Zingers to the post-Walmart crowd, would you be getting hammered on the clock, too?
