What Do You Need All That Space For?
I am the maître-d at a busy Manhattan spot. On weekends we mainly seat reservations, but we take walk-ins, as well.
Customer: “Can I see a menu, please? I have a party of two, if we choose to stay.”
I give her a menu. She takes it outside and proceeds to sit at one of the tables, which is reserved. I can’t have her sitting there as it is for parties of four, and I have one coming in soon.
Me: “Ma’am, can I offer you this table over here that’s meant for two?”
Customer: “No, I want to keep this table.”
Me: “I have reservations coming in that need the tables for four.”
Customer: “Put them at that other table you offered me.”
Me: “I’m sorry, but I can’t comfortably put a four-top reservation at a two-top table. And it wouldn’t be fair to do that to people who booked in advance.”
She finally takes the two-top after LOTS of arguing.
Then, her friend comes, and things get worse. She comes up to the front.
Customer: “Can you please move us? My friend is allergic to the sun and she can’t sit there.”
Me: “I’m glad to move you to an indoor table.”
Customer: “We don’t want an indoor table. We want that one!”
She points to another four-top.
Me: “Ma’am, what you see is what you get. The table I have you at is the only outdoor one I can give you. Would you like to speak to the manager?”
Customer: “Please.”
The manager, who is also my boyfriend, takes a look at my iPad and tells her what I told her.
Manager: “We can’t offer you any of these four-tops. You can sit where we seated you.”
She puts up another fight but then goes back to her two-top.
The host, who works beside me, walks by them not even five minutes later to seat someone else. They flag her down and tell her I’m awful and difficult. I go out there again to see if she’s still causing problems for staff and see that she and her friend have moved themselves to a larger table. I walk over and she goes on her whole “my friend is allergic to the sun” spiel. Her friend is pulling an Oscar-worthy performance, acting as if she’s ill. Meanwhile, it’s raining and there’s not a spot of sun out.
Me: “Once again, I am happy to move you inside to accommodate the sun allergy.”
Customer: “No, we can’t do that! We want this table!”
That’s it. I get the manager and he goes to tell them they have to move as we have a party of five coming for that table in ten minutes. They look at each other.
Customer: *To her friend* “Just ignore him and keep eating.”
They made conversation over him as he was trying to talk to them.
My boyfriend is an extremely chill guy. Not much gets to him, but I could tell that this was pushing him to the edge. He ended up calling the owner and the cops. He told them that these women were disrespecting his staff and he wanted to put a stop to it. He told the women he was going to call them beforehand, but this didn’t deter them, and they stayed put at the table.
The cops showed up and offered to escort them out, but the manager said no because at that point they were already basically done. (I would’ve just let them escort the women out because they were already there). The cops said they were happy to do things like this especially, when it comes to entitled customers, so that was nice, but they ended up leaving without talking to them.
I set up the five-top around them as they were eating, adding chairs and place settings. They ended their experience by telling the server he was wonderful and that he wouldn’t believe what “they had to go through”. Please.
