Those Dirty (Table) Tricks Won’t Work

I work in a restaurant, and I am hosting. My restaurant pretty much always gets up to an hour wait by 8:00 pm, almost every day. A lady walks up at 8:10.

Lady: “Table for three, please.”

Me: “I’m sorry, but we are already on an hour and a half wait, and we close at nine, so we won’t be able to take any more names on the list.”

Lady: “I see an open table outside. Can we just sit there?”

Me: *Giving her a look* “Well, no. I have ten names on this list before you, and that table is one of theirs.”

Lady: “This wait is unacceptable!”

She scoffed away.

Ten minutes later, I saw another table outside get up, and lo and behold, that lady immediately stepped over our barriers for outside dining and sat down at the completely dirty table. I just shook my head and told my servers that she was on the bottom of the list and to ignore her, which they did.

She sat for twenty minutes at a dirty table trying to get servers’ attention before finally giving up.

Surprisingly, she didn’t try and make‍ a scene. I can thank her for that, I guess.