A mother has said she was left close to tears after a customer told her she should leave a pub because her ‘overwhelmed’ autistic son was making too much noise.
Jenny Clough, 32, and her son Jack, 5, were in the Wetherspoons Pen Cob restaurant in Pwllheli on July 23 around 2pm when she claims the incident took place.
The NHS administrator and her son were visiting family in Llanaelhaearn, Wales when Jack, who was diagnosed with autism last summer, became overwhelmed at the pub.
Jenny Clough, 32, and her son Jack, 5, were in the Wetherspoons Pen Cob restaurant in Pwllheli on July 23 at around 2pm when she claims the incident happened
Miss Clough, who is from Manchester, said that her son was making noise and it hadn’t even gone on for a full minute when a man told her to leave.
She said: ‘I explained that Jack is autistic and I asked him to just give me a minute to calm him down but he responded by saying it wasn’t his f***ing problem and said he was trying to have a nice meal with his wife.
‘I couldn’t believe it was happening, nothing like this has ever happened before.’
She described the incident as upsetting and said she knew what her son was like so she knew that it wasn’t going to be a full-blown tantrum.
Miss Clough said: ‘If it had been going on for 10 minutes I might understand but it was 60 seconds at most.’
However the man’s criticism didn’t stop there. Miss Clough claims she became more defensive when the man said his wife had ‘one of them at home’.
She said she began sobbing and told the man he was horrible. She decribed the incident as ‘bullying’.
When a member of staff did intervene they told her to be mindful of other customers.
Jack was diagnosed with autism in summer last year and was with his mum visiting family in Llanaelhaearn
Miss Clough said the staff should have supported her, but appreciates that they probably didn’t know how to handle the situation.
Yet another member of the public suggested they they should leave.
Miss Clough said she contacted the pub after and that the manager apologised. She accepted and said she has no issue with the staff.
She said: ‘I’ve been to this Wetherspoons before and the staff have always been lovely.
‘My problem is with this individual, who was actually sitting five or six tables away from us anyway.’
The Wetherspoon manager apologised to Miss Clough and she accepted the apology, saying it was not the staff she had a problem with, but the individual man
She said while she understands he is entitled to a nice meal the pub is a family-friendly place, and other children were also making noise.
She said that she and her son were just an inconvenience in the man’s day and while he isn’t thinking about them, she is thinking about him.
While she isn’t interested in naming and shaming the man she does want other people to realise that not all kids are ‘just having a tantrum’.
The incident did put her off being in public for a few days afterwards.
Wetherspoon spokesman Eddie Gershon said: ‘We wholeheartedly apologise, once again, to the lady and her son.
‘We can confirm that all managers will be retrained in dealing with incidents of this type.
‘The gentleman who made the comment will no longer be welcome in the pub.’