“Women And Children First” Now Applies To Restaurant Waitlists

(I work in a very small restaurant; we have only sixteen seats. During a very busy dinner shift, a woman comes in.)

Customer: “Hi. There’s two of us for dinner.”

Me: “Great! Just to warn you: as you can see, we’re very busy, and there are several parties waiting already. It’s going to be a pretty extensive wait… maybe forty-five minutes to an hour.”

Customer: “But… I have a twelve-year-old with me.”

Me: “That does not change the number of people who are on the list ahead of you.”

(I still don’t know why she thought having a child with her would make me disregard the customers who’d come before her. Especially when that child was certainly old enough to wait an hour for dinner.)