Etiquetteer should not have to tell you this. Etiquetteer should really, really not have to tell you this. But apparently there are parents of babies out there who simply do not care about or understand what is and isn't Perfectly Proper in public. So here it is.
You may not change a baby's diaper in a restaurant's dining room.
That should be really obvious, shouldn't it? So Etiquetteer was appalled when some weeks ago a Revolted Friend posted on social media a photo of a woman changing a baby's diaper at a local bakery. On a table at which people were eating!
A quick search of the Internet proves, unfortunately, that this isn't the first time it's happened. One dad wrote to Chipotle after his wife made a scene there by changing a diaper on a dining room table, because there were no changing tables in the restrooms. This Sort of Thing has even happened at the White House, as the photo above from 2009 shows.
The excuse in most of these cases is that the restrooms contained no changing tables*. Since changing tables only started appearing in public restrooms since the 1990s, and in both women's and men's rooms more recently, one wonders what people did before this important innovation. Not this! The absence of a changing table is no excuse for using a dining table in a public restaurant off which people will be eating to perform an act that is unavoidably unsanitary. It does not matter how many antibacterial wipes you have in your bag.
Etiquetteer hopes it will not be necessary to mention this again.
*Reports on the Bakery in Question insinuate that more than one changing table is, in fact, available.