It’s A Table Not A TARDIS

I work in a fairly nice restaurant with occasionally long wait times on weekend nights.

I am hosting one Friday night. We are pretty busy with maybe a thirty-minute wait for parties of four or less, but larger parties depend on the size as we only have two different spots that will fit anything over about eight. 

A customer comes in with her several children and approaches the other host who is manning the desk.

Customer: “I have twelve people.”

Host: “All right, just so you know, for a party of that size, it is going to be about a forty-five-minute wait.”

Customer: “Why? There’s a table right there.”

She points to one of the six-person raised booths in the restaurant that is covered in dirty dishes.

All of the hosts are thinking three things: one, twelve people won’t fit into a six-person booth. Two, we can’t put high chairs at the end of raised booths due to it being neither the right height nor safe. And three, there are two other large parties ahead of this group on the waitlist, so even if they could fit there safely, they’d still have to wait on the other parties first.

The host explains these to the customer in a polite customer service manner.

Customer: “Geez! I don’t see why we can’t just go sit there! I don’t want to leave. Just put us on the list anyway.”

She stomps off with her kids. The host proceeds with normal work and I don’t think much of that encounter until I am walking past the aforementioned booth and notice that that lady from before has crammed all nine of her kids into the booth along with — somehow — herself and two other adults.

I walk over to start to explain that they can’t do that when she stops me mid-sentence to say:

Customer: “Can we please get a high chair over here?! My baby has nowhere to sit!”

I definitely don’t want to get into that with her so I just walk away and tell the main host, who is very sassy and good at telling people off.

The main host goes over to the table and tells the family that they have to leave because they cut the line and put too many people into the booth, and the lady starts yelling:

Customer: “I was seated here! You can’t make me leave! I demand to see your manager!” 

The main host went and got the manager who told them they had to leave. The lady was steadily yelling about awful service all the way out the door.