Friday, August 10, 2007

Nocturnal Omissions

It seems my list of things not to do to the host of a restaurant was a bit incomplete. So here are a few more tips to prevent me from paying the valet to slash your tires:


1. Incomplete parties. If you are a party of more than, say, one, I am not going to seat you until your compatriots arrive. Every empty chair represents money and you and your invisible party of eleven are costing us money. I know they're "on the way," everyone's on the way. To somewhere. I suggest in your case that the "somewhere" is the Cheesecake Factory.


2. I'm sorry you're in a wheelchair. I am! I totally sympathize with the fact that you drove drunk and had a car wreck and now your legs work like flippers! I swear I get it! But tell me that when you call so that I don't schedule you for the table on the platform. Because lemme tell ya: this is your problem, not mine. Pop a wheelie and get up those stairs already.

3. If we have an item on the menu that costs less than fifteen dollars, the chances of us having a computer screen at the front door that tells us everything from what time a table came in to the blood pressure of the alcoholic on table 41 are pretty slim. I am working off of a yellow legal pad. That's how fancy the system is. So give me a break when I can't tell you if your table will be available within the second. Also? I hate you. I just had your tires slashed.


4. If you are drunk, congratulations! But I wonder if you're as drunk as me?! Probably not. So! Here's the arrangement: I will seat you and be nice to you as long as you don't give me any grief. If you perhaps get the wild idea that you are in charge of me...or god forbid that you are superior to me in any way...oh dear, I hope you enjoy dealing with all the prank calls later this evening. Remember: I have your number from when you made the reservation. I hope you have Prince Albert in a can!

5. I apologize that we are serving a fish you have never heard of. If that makes you nervous, don't order it. If you have never heard of it and you do order it and you dislike it, it occurs to me that this is YOUR problem, not mine. SO I ain't paying for it. That's what I'm saying.

Other than that, you're all perfectly lovely, and we appreciate your business.

1 comment:

Jeremy said...

And another thing. It's not my fault that you made poor choices when you were pulling things out of your closet. That really isn't my problem. I'm sorry you're cold, ice queen, but it's your fault. It's called layering. Bring a sweater. If you need it, wear it. If you don't, take it off.

When you're the first person in the restaurant and you show up 2 minutes after opening, it's going to be chilly. We could start the evening at a comfortable temperature, but by the time the room is filled with warm bodies it would be like eating in an oven. Besides that, I'm not cold. At all. In fact, I'm already well past warm, and as the temperature in the restaurant goes up, my pleasantness quotient drops. And since we don't get shift drinks at this place, it's already precariously low.

But here's what I can do. It's called pretending. I'll pretend to listen and pretend to care and pretend to tell someone. That pretend person will glance at the thermostat (i.e. I bitched about you to another server while they were texting someone) and when I come back and ask you if it's better, you'll sigh with relief and say "Yes, that's so much better". It's a win-win. You got to complain, and I didn't have to do anything.