I’ve really been enjoying the change of season recently, especially getting back to sleeping on my futon in the couch position with the sunlight coming in. When the skies are blue and there is nothing to do the dreams can get a little strange. Last night I dreamt that I had a friend who had a movie that they could only show me using this device that was a coffee maker with a computer hard drive. The coffee was steaming hot and delicious, but I don’t recall the film being any good.
Saturday night I had to be asked to leave the restaurant to cool down. The manager actually asked me, during service, to leave the hostess podium and go out back to smoke a fag and cool the hell down. What had happened was that during a point of major turnover for the whole restaurant, a few regulars got way out of line. The problem sometimes with telling customers how long they will have to wait for a table is that those already seated and eating fall under a spell of herd behavior, and won’t vacate their table until they see other people leaving.
This creates a moment when a lot of the tables in the restaurant have to be filled all at once. It gives the impression to those just arrived that everything is out of control because the podium staff is frantic trying to organize new customers for the newly cleared tables. Chaos is confusing, and points of high turnover can become very chaotic and confusing. It was in one of these whirls of activity that the regular customer stepped out over the thin red line. Although they didn’t have to wait even ten minutes for their table for four on a busy Saturday, it wasn’t good enough.
And so they moved themselves to a table by the window, where I had planned to seat a VIP table of five that was already settling up their bill at the bar. No one was properly asked, they stepped out over that bright line on their own. Seeing what was happening and realizing that I could not fit the VIP table of five at the newly vacated table for four, I ran over to these regulars, and quickly told them the dilemma and asked them to move back. “We can’t move back, that table smells,” I was told, and I had to be asked to leave the restaurant to cool way down.
First I went to the wait station where a young busser overheard me yell, “I will punch them in their heads!” while I punched the air. A scene from a lively and rico restaurant in Paris with the dispeptic hostess promising bodily violence to the beloved regulars, maybe. Then I went up to my manager who was holding off the frenzy at the host podium and said, “I Need To Talk to You Right Now… No I Really Need to Talk to You Right Now.” She took me to the back of the restaurant and I told her that they said my table smells. I sat them in less than ten minutes and they stepped over the line and told me it smelled.
I was told to smoke a cigarette and cool down. Later on in the evening, I buried the hatchet and sang happy birthday to the lady at the table. Either passive aggressive or a little insane or both. But never in my life in the hospitality industry has the customer, much less the regular customer, had the nerve to tell me that something smells. It just seemed way over the line and ridiculous and it almost made my brain explode instantly.
superkat, it’s getting a little tense out there in Boston. I can feel you’re vibrating at a high energy, but some of it is sheer anxiety. keep it on the sheer up!
saturday nights are war. i remember you telling me this story while i dodged land mines in my section. you were a wreck and ready to bloody those regulars. thank god you left the floor to chill out. let’s leave MURDER off the list of ecg problems!
Murder was the case that they gave me. Please stop thinking of the customers as human. If you refuse I’ll chop you into a million pieces.