"Right this way please"--Service with a smile!

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Thought for the day: "Being young is a fault which improves daily." A Swedish proverb. ************************************************************************************ (I was a professional server for 38 years in all sorts of restaurants and this is just one of my many observations about the people who work in the business. This discussion is long but you might learn something--I hope!) Should a restaurant have some booths everyone wants to sit in them. Should there be windows everyone wants to sit there. Now if the place had 10 booths next to windows twenty parties want to sit in the booths near the windows. No one wants to sit next to the kitchen or near a side stand area. Very often a customer will request a certain server to wait on them on someone else's station. There are customers who must have their back to the wall, others who don't want to sit near air conditioning ducts, while others, for no reason at all, won't sit at the first table they are shown. You made a reservation for 8 PM and the party who sits at the table decides to have a 3rd cup of coffee and an after dinner drink and there are no other tables available so you are asked to wait a few minutes. The other scenario is that you didn't make a reservation, the dining room looks empty, and when you are asked if you would like to wait in the bar you think the restaurant is just trying to get you to spend more money. It is dumping time on the host/hostess/captain/ maitre de/dining room manager or whatever title the restaurant owner has designated for the seating person. Let's look behind the scenes. The hostess's name is Phyllis. She has a seating chart and a reservation list in front of her. The dining room is set up in stations--the number of tables each server is responsible for. She has assigned specific tables for each of the reservations, keeping in mind special requests for certain servers and/or tables and the average length of time a party will take to eat their dinner. Phyllis, also, has to spread the parties around so that one server won't have too many at one time while another server is doing nothing. (This not only has to do with good service but to help each server earn a living.) Restaurants have a designated closing section and/or server so Phyllis has to know when to stop seating certain tables. She has to check that each server has set up their station properly and that everything is in place. Should there be a waiting line she has to keep the names in order, estimate the waiting time, (and she better not underestimate it!) and explain why a party that came in later is being seated first. Phyllis has to contend with servers constantly harassing her for more parties or telling her that another server had two more people than they had. At the same time a customer is berating her for saying there was a ten minute wait and they have already been there eleven minutes. Phyllis has to defer to regular customers, who are the backbone of the business, while catering to the first time customers so that they will come back. She has to help servers whenever and wherever she can and, at the same time, take care of incoming calls. Along with hearing complaints from customers after the fact, or dealing with something the server could have handled, she has to make sure the menus are clean and that daily specials are clipped on them. Phyllis has to know how to handle VIPs while not ignoring other customers and she has to keep her cool when her boss and the family decide to eat during the height of the dinner hour, knowing it will create problems for the server and the chef. She has to keep an eye on the front door, another on the customers waiting for tables, say goodnight to the ones leaving, be sure the ones already seated are being taken care for. One ear is always listening for the phone while both hands are busy helping the busboy clean and reset tables and/or go around pouring coffee. Last, but not least, she has to hear the constant complaining by the servers about the lousy tips they got topped only by the busboys telling her that the servers didn't tip him enough! At the end of the evening, sitting at a table with her shoes off, her feet aching, doing her paperwork, she now has to steel herself for the meeting with her boss who will nitpick about things they thought they saw that was done wrong. And if she is lucky some of the staff might say goodnight to her when they leave. PS If they have the title of host or hostess in all probability they are earning minimum or a little over minimum wage.