Tales from the Restaurant

Tales from the Restaurant
Where you'll find all the restaurant dirt you'll ever need.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

"No no, I want to sit over THERE."

If there's one thing all servers and hosts/hostesses hate more than anything, it's when people refuse to sit where you put them. In every restaurant, there's not one shift that goes by without some obnoxious twat waffle proclaiming loudly that she "would rather sit at that booth over there."

She is usually referring to a sitting area which is indescribably dirty, reserved for someone else, or is in some way incredibly and inconveniently out of the way.

The peculiar thing about this phenomenon is that of all of the crotchety old bitch bags who demand to sit where they want is that they have a variety of indirect ways of telling you. Here are a few examples, including my rebuttals;

-"I want to sit someplace quiet." (points to booth)
The restaurant is almost always either completely empty and ENTIRELY quiet, or totally full and there is no chance that there is a soundproof VIP suite available. People who say this are just too chickenshit to openly defy you, and if you tell them that the noise level is relatively consistent, they will point to where they want to sit and say something extremely fucking annoying like "that booth over there looks quiet." It probably is located right between the table full of drunk college students and the party comprised entirely of screaming infants.

-"I don't like that table."
Granted, it's probably located near something like a central causeway or possibly another table, but there's nothing wrong with it. You're the picky kind of table racist that isn't happy anywhere and will lead the host all over the god-damned restaurant until you find something that suits YOU. You don't care how many toes you step on, cuntbag.

-"Can I have that booth right there?"
No you can't. This question reminds me of this lovable repeat patron at one of the restaurants I've worked at. The staff and I gave her the name "B.C." I'll let you guess what this stands for, but my hint is that it's not a Johnny Hart reference. This lady with a French/German accent would always come in by herself (inferred that she has no friends), demand a specific seat, and immediately ask for water, sugar, and lemons so that she could make her own lemonade at the table and not pay for one.
BC stands for "Booth Cunt." In the words of one of my former fellow employees, "Man. I don't know where she gets off being such a bitchy booth cunt. I should give her a piece of my mind."

Also for the record, I fucking hate it when people make their own lemonade at the table. It just says you're too fucking cheap to spend three bucks. And that you're a cuntbag extraordinaire.

You know who makes their own lemonade? Ten year olds. And they sell it on the street for twenty-five cents a cup.

Tangent, sorry.

Now, there are times when it is acceptable to make your preferences for seating known, but those times are never. You sit where you're told to, and here's why;

-Servers have sections. If you ask to go to a different section, you are depriving a waiter of tip money and giving more to another server.
-The hosts plan to seat reservations. You might be fucking up where they're planning to seat people, and in turn, causing other people to wait longer for their dinners.
-You're wasting time if the person has to check back to make sure the table you want isn't reserved. Waiters earn money only when they move quickly enough, and you're doing a great job ruining everyone's lives when you ask to get put somewhere else.

Sit where you're told to sit. This includes people who walk in, ignore the people at the front saying hello, and sit wherever they damned well please. If you are a person who does this, you will burn forever in a special place in hell.

4 comments:

  1. i really want to beat B.C. the f up, man. sorry that she's such a cunty douche.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm just curious, am I allowed to have a preference for which table or type of table I am seated at, or should I always be forced to sit at a hostesses whim? And if I do want a booth, table a touch away from douches, etc. how should I ask?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Here's how I think about it. If you come in and it's not terribly busy, you can ask in a reasonable tone of voice if there's any way you can be put in a certain area. That way the host and hostesses have a chance to be somewhat fair and keep the count even. If you ask to sit in a specific place in a specific seat, you're really just being a picky cunt-breathed ass-dragon.

    If it's completely busy, you should have absolutely no say in the matter. Period.

    Bottom line; preferences are OK if it's not too busy to be reasonable. Asking is also OK. Demanding is not.

    Cheers!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I wait 40 hours a week at a very busy chain fast-cas, and have no shame about asking for whatever seat in the house I fucking want when I go out to eat. It's called "service", you're a "server", it's your fucking job to serve my reasonable needs, and then I pay the house for the materials and you for the service. That's why tipping exists.

    When I work, I earn mine through genuinely giving a shit about accommodating the customer unless they're deliberately being a dick. I don't consider taking a more desirable empty table than I'm offering to be a dick move. I'm not going to accept a table 3 feet from the double doors if there's a nice empty booth in somebody else's section, nor would I get pissy with a customer for feeling the same way.

    The customer doesn't give a shit about my convenience and doesn't know about my section arrangements, nor should he. It's not his fucking job. I serve him, he pays me.

    If you're too stupid or lazy to keep a tally when somebody jumps you in the table queue, you need to be washing dishes or bussing instead of waiting tables.

    ReplyDelete