We’ve had a few stories about toddlers accidentally getting served alcohol inside sippy cups by the waiters at big-name chain restaurants and wondered, how in the heck did that happen? According to what some restaurant insiders say, there’s a very simple and sad explanation.

At some restaurants, staffer are only allowed to have beverages in the back if they have lids on them, and a lot of times they opt to use sippy-cups. Well sometimes to get through the grind of the day the servers buddy up to the bartender and get him to slip something extra in their drink, their cocktail of choice. Then in the hubbub of the kitchen, it’s easy for one of the employee’s sippy cups to get mixed up with the sippy cups getting served out on the floor. Then you got yourself a drunk baby.

“Simple cup mix up is all it takes,” one insider wrote Consumerist. “I’ve seen this happen, and it really does.”

A poster on TwoPeasInABucket wrote: “Several people who work in these types of restaurants say that servers often help themselves to “happy juice” – make alcoholic drinks and put them in sippy cups so they can drink on the job”

And a Huffington Post commenter wrote: “I’ve worked for a few years in restaurant­s and both: servers and bartenders using sippy cups to hide their own booze is a routine mode of operation. The type of work most of these people do is both long (10-12 hours per day) and rather stressful. Many combat this by abusing alcohol, some start drinking as early as noon on a weekday.”

In other cases it appears the sippy cups were also used to hold prepared margarita or sangria mix. Which is also just asking for trouble.

So next time you order a beverage for your toddler at a restaurant in a sippy cup, make sure to sniff and taste it first before letting them have it. You want to make sure it’s not the cup of sad juice some server was downing in the back an hour ago.

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Toddler Receives Alcoholic Margarita Mix Instead Of Apple Juice At Applebee’s
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