Moms Statewide Beginning to Worry Light Jacket Might Not Be Enough If They Sit Us On The Patio

On December 1st, Ellen Isley’s Monday evening began the same as most others; by stepping out of her Chevy Tahoe and into the Chili’s parking lot. At 6PM, the restaurant was filling quickly with the sound of the worst women you know ordering Wicked Margaritas. The boymom-of-three-adult-sons would soon realize that she had made a fatal mistake. The temperature in Oviedo had dropped to a shocking 62ºF, down from the comfortable 74ºF of last Monday’s Chili’s dinner. Isley moved quickly through the lot, clutching her jean jacket as she approached the host stand. “Table for 4, please,” Isley reportedly asked. The hostess’s next words came as a complete shock to the Boomette: “We only have tables open on the patio, would that work?” Unable to speak, Isley was whisked away to one of the restaurant’s fully outdoor metal tables. Despite multiple reports of patio space heaters standing unused in the corner of the establishment, witnesses stated that not a single heater was present on the patio itself. That night, Isley would indeed put that jean jacket on over an outfit composed entirely of Coldwater Creek merchandise, but she would later insist that she remained chilly until she returned to her SUV nearly an hour later.

As temperatures throughout the Northeastern United States plummet into the negatives after nightfall, mothers from Pensacola to Key West are grappling with the same terrifying question Ellen Isley asked herself at the host stand that evening, a question that they should have asked before they left the house to grab dinner: will a light jacket be enough if we are sat on the patio?

Isley’s story is all too familiar to hundreds of thousands of moms across the Sunshine State. What’s more, new findings indicate that the drop in temperatures within casual restaurants’ outside dining areas is straining the relationship between parent and child; over 74% of cold mothers out to eat with their children report significant stress upon realizing their child has chosen to wear a T-shirt. One such son told The Eggplant that his mother “refused to speak to him for the rest of the meal, then tipped the waitress 5%.” However, the son also reports that “he racked up $600 in Doordash charges” on his mother’s card last month, and that the server had dyed a “purple streak in her hair,” so it “might’ve been a combination of those things, too.”