I'm going to apologize right off the bat to anyone that gets offended by this post. I'm going to be treading on some racial, stereo typing, profiling thin ice here but what the heck, I calls them like I sees them. After reading this, please by all means, give me some feed back because I'd really like to hear the opinions from every angle. The story I'm about to tell, isn't the first time that this has happened. Statistically with me its easily 75% of the time and that's being conservative. Please don't get shitty with me for telling this story, I'm not the one that named it, I'm just passing it along. It might just be in the restaurant business, I don't know. But its definitely in the restaurant business.
I took a reservation for twenty people on a Friday night for 7:30pm. Those of you in this business know that that is prime time. I asked all the right questions, is it separate checks, are there any small children requiring high chairs or booster, what is the special occasion. This was a party of all adults, separate checks. 7:45 rolls around and no one has showed for the party. I instruct the host to call to confirm the reservation, she tells me know one answers. 8:00 still no on from the party, the restaurant is now in full swing and we have people waiting at the door for a table. I instruct the bus boys to break down the party. By 8:15 the tables are about to be ready to seat when I am called to the door. I get there and a young woman is standing there looking confused. I asked what she needed and she told me she was the one that made the reservation. I said did you make it for 7:30, she said yes. I said well I'm sorry but you weren't here, she said I'm here now. I told her she was lucky because I haven't seated the tables yet. She said that no one told her that we wouldn't hold the tables. I was kinda speechless, could she really not relate to what was going on? I instructed the bus boys to put the party back together again. By 8:15 I seated the one girl, mean while there is a line out the door of people waiting to be seated. 8:30 rolls by then 8:45 two more show up. dinner rush is now winding down and the girl tells her server its only going to be six people. Again I have the bus boys break down most of the party. At nine o'clock two more show to that table, that's five and that is all that comes to that party. OK I'm going to give it to you in dollars and cents. A party of 20 takes six tables that seat four per table, when you put them together you loose a couple of seats. The server that makes 2.13 an hour and relies on their tips, so from 6:45 when we had to stop seating that area to make sure we had all the tables we needed, until 9:00 when they let the other tables go, six tables flipped twice that's 48 people with a check average of 20.00 per person tipping 18%. the restaurant lost 960.00 in sales and the server lost 172.00 before tip out, so he would have walked out the building with 150. instead the restaurant made 100.00 and the server was lucky if he made 20. The sever in this story was a black kid, that said god damn BPT. I asked him what that meant" BPT," he said black people time.
Ive since learned to let people know that I can't hold the table for more than twenty minutes without a phone call and I suggest that there will be a charge for seats not used. But that still doesn't stop that from happening. What do you do?
Dear BEN,
ReplyDeleteWe have people doing the same thing to us on Brunch Days. On Brunch days we're open from 8am to 2pm. That's 6 hours of non stop waiting, bussing, running food, etc. Most of the day we are usually on a wait and we don't take reservations on Brunch days. It happens often when one person is seated and waiting for the rest of the party to arrive sometimes it's 2 minutes, sometimes it's 5 minutes but if the party hasn't showed up after 10 or 15 minutes I (politely as possible) tell them "I'm sorry but we are extremely busy, as you can see, and if your party is not here in 5 minutes I'm going to have to ask you to go back outside and put your name back on the waiting list but only after your entire party has arrived. I'm not trying to be rude but it's not fair to the other customers who have waited outside with their entire party. Thanks for understanding... blah blah blah," You get the picture.
I think you were right to breakdown the table, and if that women made a reservation for 7:30 and she assumed you'd hold it for her until she showed up whenever she felt like coming, SHE'S STUPID!!!! WTF?!?! No one does that! Get real LADY! I think that when she came in trying to play the ignorance card... "I didn't know they would hold the table for me." Well guess what?! You're the only one in the civilized world that doesn't know you make a reservation for THE TIME YOU ARE TO ARRIVE.
I do think that you should have asked her if the full party was there with her when she showed up 45 minutes after she made the reservation. And if they were you would get the tables ready again and seat her, but since it was just her, I would have said, "I'm sorry but until your whole party has arrived I'm going to have to ask you to wait at the bar or somewhere until they arrive and THENNNNNN we will seat you." I'm sure she would have gotten all "THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS! I'M CALLING CORPORATE ON YOU. But does corporate even care about your rationalized thinking? I hope so, because if they treated and trusted their employees and managers to make rational decisions that benefit the company and would help them make more money, they would have your back on situations like these.
WTF is WRONG WITH PEOPLE?!?!?