the restaurant I work at as a hostess doesn’t take reservations, but we do take call-aheads, which just means you can call the day of and leave your name, party size, and time of arrival, and we put your name on the list so we can try to have something ready. it’s like letting us know you’re coming even if you get waitlisted for a little bit, which is super helpful for the hosts.
anyway, yesterday (saturday), was prom night for the biggest high school in town. we did get a lot of call-aheads, but we also got a lot of people just walking in and asking for a table for 6 people right then.
we also had this elderly lady call ahead for a party of 10 for around 6 pm, and she said she’d arrive around 5:45 to “get in line,” so to speak. she didn’t do that. instead, she showed up with half her party at 6 pm and was like, “where’s our table? I made a reservation.” I told her gently, “I’m sorry, we don’t make reservations — ” (because I was trying to tell her the call-ahead wasn’t a guarantee she’d get her table immediately) but she interrupted me and said, “yeah, you do.” oh my bad! you must know our seating policies better than me, the employee. :)
as if that wasn’t bad enough, we didn’t have a table ready yet because we’d been busy as fuck the whole night, so she sat in the waiting area with her family and glared at us for the next 20 minutes until we could finally seat them. I bet they didn’t tip, either.
