It was early in the afternoon but there were already people in the restaurant’s entrance hall talking under the bright light from the giant chandelier or reading on the big sofas. Most places were abandoned at this time on weekdays, but here there seemed to always be well dressed groups of people lounging in the extravagant room and casting huge shadows on the walls. There was one person out of place: a small boy had wandered in through the giant doors and was beginning to walk around the room glaring at everything. The manager was called to ask the boy to leave the building before he could do anything wrong.
The manager was new and had never had to ask anyone to leave. He knew from training that he was supposed to be polite and considerate as he explained why the person needed to leave, to make sure that he asked instead of telling and, most importantly, to avoid disturbing the people who were there to eat. The manager had been very annoyed that the trainers, the overconfident owners of the restaurant, had thought this explanation was necessary to tell him; it was the logical thing to do. He obviously would have known what to do without them.
The manager walked up to the boy quickly but not quickly enough to draw attention to himself. As he approached, the boy stood defiantly on the soft, purple carpet. The man was disappointed that he didn’t back away but he drew himself up so he cast a tall shadow over the boy and told him to leave. The boy said he didn’t want to go. The manager had been expecting this. The trainers were not as smart as he was and had probably never had to ask anyone to leave. The manager looked around the giant room and saw people peeking at him from their own conversations. He wished he could make someone else do this job but he couldn’t now that everyone was watching. It didn’t matter anyway because he was probably the only one smart enough to make the boy leave. The manager knew that the boy wouldn’t want to leave and would have to be forced to leave but he also didn’t want to cause a scene with so many customers watching so he told the boy to leave again. The boy thought the man was being very rude and wished he would explain why he needed to leave. The boy wondered if the man knew the correct instructions for asking him to leave, knowing that if he were in charge then it would be done correctly.
The manager saw the boy wasn’t going to move so he began pushing him toward the door. The manager was extremely proud of himself. He was going to solve the problem without the training: he had been right. He didn’t register the sudden silence in the restaurant as every customer turned to watch him. Then he realized that everyone had heard him telling the boy to leave and they were now watching as he forced the boy out. He decided maybe the trainers had been right: maybe he should have been more polite. The manager stopped pushing the boy and turned him around back into the bright lights of the restaurant asking if he would like to stay and have some food to eat. The boy stood there surprised but quickly judged that he did not like the man and he should not trust him so he backed up shaking his head then hurried away, his shadow growing as he headed to the door.
The manager saw how much of a disturbance he had caused in the restaurant as the silence that he had created was slowly broken by people turning to their neighbors to discuss what they had witnessed and changed his mind: he should have listened during his training so that he would have been able to do the right thing. Although, he thought, the boy no longer darkened the room so he had successfully solved the problem.