Monday, March 15, 2010

I'd feel sorrier for you if you weren't a table jacker.

Since servers come in at staggered times in my restaurant, it's not unusual for me to come in and five and find that all my tables are full and other people are waiting on them. Technically, according to the rules, those servers have every right to keep those tables. In practice, most of us choose not to be assholes, and will give any table that hasn't ordered yet to the server whose section it is.

When I arrived at work on Monday, there were two tables that had just been sat in my section. Both had been greeted, so I started trying to figure out by whom. One coworker told me the table of two wanted waters, but she didn't know who had greeted the other one (a party of five). So I took waters to my couple, got their order, and resumed trying to figure out who had greeted my other table.

Turns out it was Mr. Vomit-worthy--who had stopped to trade Family Guy quips with me already, so he knew I was there, knew that I had arrived right after he greeted my table, and yet chose to keep them. They didn't even have their drinks by the time I got the other table's order put in--anyone else would've given them to me with a smile.

Of course, according to the actual rules, I didn't have grounds to demand he fork over the order. So I stewed for a while. But restaurant karma caught up to him: he got rapid-fire sat with large tables full of high-maintenance people. I watched him dash around, dealing with his full section plus one table out of his way in my section; I watched panic cross his face; I watched, and I didn't offer a damn bit of help. He was managing, it just would've made his life easier if I had stepped up to help him. Instead, I focused on my own tables, ensuring they were perfectly attended to.

When I saw that VM had gotten orders for all but one table, I finally approached him and asked, as sweetly as possible, if he needed help. He gave me a wild-eyed look and said, "I'm fine, now. I think." I just smiled and went back to my tables.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I come in at 5..I know the story about coming into a full section..There was this server, she would seat people in the 5 o'clock girls section only while she was there, fill that one up, so when the other girl came on she would move to the next section over (empty of course) and be able to fill that one up as well, while the later girl had to sit and wait until her section cleared to take a table. HA.

purplegirl said...

We had somebody who used to do that crap too, used to drive me CRAZY!