The other night I witnessed one of those classic kid meltdowns that got me thinking about -- what else -- restaurant PR.

Two little girls were at the neighborhood ice cream shop with their parents when the younger one suddenly realized she did not have the exact same ice cream cone as her big sister. Though she had her own ice cream cone -- and presumably picked out the sugar cone and Blue Moon ice cream -- suddenly, what she really, really wanted more than anything else in the world was something she couldn’t have.

Let me tell you, she was not pleased to be dealt this injustice. And she let her parents -- and by proxy, the rest of us -- know it.

Not to draw comparisons between tantrum-throwing toddlers and chefs, but this little scene reminded me of some chefs who only seem to care about their press when they are left out of an article that featured their peers.

They don’t seem to care much when their publicist calls to tell them a reporter would like to interview them for a story … or when their publicist calls again to ask them nicely to please return the call of said reporter who left them a message two days ago and still hasn’t heard back … or when their publicist fires off in rapid succession an increasingly threatening series of e-mails, texts, voicemails and Facebook messages reminding them that the badgering is in their best interest.

But as soon as these same chefs get word of an article that mentions their competitors, suddenly they have all the time in the world.  They have time for phone calls to ream their publicist for missing an opportunity, time for meetings to discuss how this isn't going to happen moving forward, time to go back through their email log to see if the publicist had known about the story and passed along the opportunity.

Chefs, I propose chewing on this food for thought: The time to care about the press you aren’t in is the moment your publicist calls to tell you about the next opportunity. Since you won't know you care about not being in the story when the story is due, if you just answer your publicists’ requests in a timely manner, you can be sure you'll never be upset by this again.