Pub-goer outraged after young child brazenly stole her $2 coin – reigniting debate over whether children should be barred from licenced venues
A fierce debate over whether children should be allowed in pubs has reignited after a child brazenly stole a woman’s $2 coin from a pool table.
The bar patron had placed the gold coin on the table just before the child ran up to her and her friends and ran off with the money.
“I’m at the pub and we put our two dollar coin on a pool table and a little kid took it and ran off with it,” the woman said in a shared video. to TikTok.
“We went to the mom to say your kid took our $2 coin and she said, ‘Oh, well, I can give you a $1 coin.’ Are you taking the piss?’
The clip sparked a debate among Australians over whether young children should be allowed into licensed venues.
‘I never agreed to taking your children to the pub. I’ve seen so many kids grow up in the pub, only to spend every day there as adults,” one person wrote.
‘Agree! Pubs are no place for children,” someone else wrote.
‘Why is a child even in the pub?’ a third added.
Others wondered why the child’s mother did not return the coin.
“Why didn’t the parent take it from the child and give it back?” wrote one person.
‘As a child who knew the pub rules. Never touch money on a pool table. Also, don’t touch things that don’t belong to you,” someone else wrote.
‘I would ask the child [to] give it back,” a third agreed.
But others said the woman overreacted.
“It only costs two dollars,” one person wrote.
“It’s $2, you take the p**s?” said another person.
“It doesn’t really matter: kids will be kids,” a third added.
The bar patron (pictured) said she placed the $2 coin on a table moments before the child ran up to the group and took off with the money.
In a second video, the woman said her first video was made as a “joke” and that the child returned the coin about half an hour later.
“I know he was just a kid and kids do things, and that’s fine. There was no problem, we were not angry with the mother, we were not angry with the child,” she said.
“The boy was old enough to know not to take things that didn’t belong to him.”
The woman explained that the stolen $2 coin was the only one her group had and that the pool table only accepts $2.
‘[The mum] said I only have a one dollar coin and we said, “Don’t worry, it’s all good,” the woman said.