I’d like to speak to the manager!!!

It’s late.  2:24 a.m. to be exact.

But this story needs to be told.

Tonight at 6:00 a 4 top walks in.  2 of them are people I don’t know.  2 of them are people are regulars and most often sit at the bar.

I panic.  They don’t have a reservation.  The woman of the couple, who sits at the bar, sees my panic and says, we are with our friends.  The reservation is in their name.

I make a show of wiping my brow and saying, thank god, because the bar is booked tonight and I didn’t want to disappoint you.

I look at their reservation and ask if they’d like to sit at the chef’s table.

The woman I know is super excited.  I get them all seated and the night goes on as planned.

They take forever.  I don’t care.  There is no turn on the table, and they are so sweet. 

At long last they come out and the woman I don’t know enters the lobby first.

I ask her how the meal was, and she exclaims that it was perfect.

Then she says, do you know why we are here?

And I say no why?

And she says because my husband and I got married on the same day, of the same month, of the same year that our friends got married.

I’m blown away by this.

The woman I do know is standing at the host stand now and says yes.  61 years ago today, we both married the man of our dreams. 

I make a comment, that after 61 years that she still seems to like her husband.  She then explains that they have been together since she was 13 and he was 15.  61 years married.

And I can’t help but smile.

They are so sweet.  And lovely.  And have dinner with us at least once a week. 

And I love them now more than ever. 

Although she did let me know they are traveling next week and won’t be back for two weeks.

I aspire to be them. 

I’d like to speak to the manager!!!

Sometimes what I witness at work makes me sad.  And angry. 

Tonight a very elderly woman comes out of the dining room.  I ask her how her meal was and she says that it was wonderful.

She says that she seems to have lost her husband but that she is going to the restroom.  She is concerned because she is carrying her left overs. 

I tell her that I will watch over them while she goes to the restroom.

They are sitting on the counter and a man walks out and asks if I’ve seen his wife.  I say that she is in the restroom.  He says to tell her he is in the car.  I ask if he’d like to take her left overs, and he says, fuck no.  Then he repeats himself and leaves.

And I think to myself.  What a horrible man. 

On Monday, I return a voicemail and a woman picks up.  She is looking for a 6:30 reservation for 2 people in the dining room.  I tell her that I can’t do 6:30 but that I can do 7:00.  I hear her ask her husband and he says something and she says, please, let’s go, we’ve been trying to go for three weeks.  I can’t understand what he says, but she is pleading with him to make 7:00 work.  She asks at least three times and then finally says, I’m sorry 7:00 won’t work. 

I want to reach through the phone and punch him.

Last summer, I hit play on the answering machine and discover not a message but an argument.  I can only hear one side of the conversation, but lest we think men are the only assholes, the woman was horrible. 

She called the man on the other side of the phone about a million different things, with the word fucking preceding most of them. 

I stopped listening at 10 minutes.

I recorded about 6 minutes of it, before I deleted the message.

But seriously, be nice to your people-people. 

Tonight during service, I hear a dozen voicemails being left but at one point I hear someone say that they need to cancel tonight, but I didn’t get their name or time of their reservation.

I had a server who was a little quiet tonight and I ask her to just listen to the messages, to find the name on the cancellation.

She is in the office for a million years and comes out and tells me who cancelled.

She is standing by the host stand an hour or so later and says, oh my god. The messages have so much unneeded information. I can’t imagine how long it takes to listen and write them all down.

And it’s true. A typical voice mail from today:

Hi, this is Bill Smith, I was in the local men’s clothing store and the lady who works there said that I would be missing the meal of a lifetime if I didn’t try your restaurant. We are visiting from New York and we know steakhouses, so if your restaurant is really that good then we of course have to try it. We’ll be staying at the All American resort while we are in town and they have a shuttle that can bring us to the restaurant. There will be four of us, my wife, and my son and his girlfriend who is visiting from San Diego. She flew in today. We need to eat early as she will tired So we will want a reservation for tonight for 4 of us at 6:30. Also, the lady at the clothing store said we should ask for the cow room. It’s the room with the barn doors, she said it’s the best table in the restaurant. Of course if that won’t work, there are high tops in front of the kitchen that are supposed to be quite nice. We wouldn’t mind sitting there, but if there are stools at the high tops, we can’t sit there if the stools don’t have backs as my wife has a running injury, from the New York City Marathon last year. It was her 17th marathon and I’m so proud of her. The woman also said that we should come early and have drinks on the patio because that is lovely as well. So we’ll be arriving around 6:00 and as I said, we’d like a table at 6:30. My phone number is 986-6789. Thanks!

This is not an exaggeration. Every. Fucking. Voicemail is 6 years long. And fun fact. Bill didn’t leave his area code. 50% of the people who call don’t leave their area code. I know this because caller ID is a godsend.

But check it out. If I had listened to the whole message, it’s at least 60 seconds in to get to the important stuff. So I get the name, I pull the phone number from call ID and hit erase. I have no idea when I call what the guest is looking for.

I’d like to speak to the manager!!!

Remember Nancy from yesterday.

There were three messages from her today when I got to work. Generic messages. Please call Nancy Smith at 555.555.5555.

I add the message to my list.

Of course when I called her back she didn’t answer and I left my standard no detail voice mail.

This is Jeff calling from the restaurant; you can reach us back at 555.555.5555.

She continued to call back throughout the afternoon, but I had a million and two calls to return and didn’t answer.

When I was finally through all the messages, I check the machine, record all the new messages and start over.

Nancy’s message this afternoon was: Hi this is Nancy, I’m trying to make a reservation for tonight can someone call me back?

I knew what she was up to, but maybe I was wrong.

I return the messages as they are written down.

I get to Nancy. I dial, she answers, and I say, hi this is Jeff, I’m calling from the restaurant. You needed to make a reservation for tonight, and she said, OH. NO. NOT TONIGHT. I JUST SAID THAT SO YOU’D CALL ME BACK TODAY.

And wouldn’t you know, before I could say a word the call dropped. And it wasn’t even my fault.

And I didn’t answer a single call from her the rest of the day.

And I’m not sure I’ll answer the calls she makes tomorrow.

And while we are on the subject of phone calls.

I had about six messages from John looking for a reservation for tonight.

He was my first call today.

I dial, he answers and I say, Hi this is Jeff calling from the restaurant, and he says, well that took long enough. I say, you wanted a reservation for tonight. He is angry and says something to the effect that if I can’t return calls in a more timely fashion then blah, blah, blah. I breathe and think about my server from Wednesday and say, sir I had 87 phone calls to return and I’m getting to them as fast as I can.

He replies and says, that sounds like your problem not mine.

He says, we’ve found some place else to eat.

I say that I’m glad that he’s found a place to eat that’s not at my restaurant.

I’m not sure he caught the implication. And I remember that I didn’t deny it when I said to my server, yes, sometime I am rude and arrogant.

He grunts and I hang up.

The first fucking call of the day.

My 2nd call was to Adam just to get a verbal hug.

Then I turned back to my list and made call number 3.

I’d like to speak to the manager!!!

Oh, where to start again.  I have 13 things on my list and the one I’m going to write about isn’t even on it. 

I wrote on Wednesday, about how I might not be as understanding with guests as I should be.  It’s not on purpose, but sometimes I just can’t.

So, it’s never a surprise when I bet a bad review or a bad survey.  I’m prepared for it.  I know its coming. 

But imagine my surprise when I logged into Resy tonight to check survey results and I see this:

Please provide feedback on your experience.

The food was good and our waiter excellent. The front of house manager is rude, intolerant of requests, unaccommodating and frankly, just plain ignorant. He refused a very reasonable request to seat our together despite there being ample space. His demeanour , attitude and deliberate unhelpfulness need to be addressed.  (They typos are his not mine). 

And:

Is there anything we can change to make you dine with us more frequently?

Yes, your front of house manager !

WOW!!!

It took me a good minute to figure out who it was.  And then I pieced together the issue.

We had three tables check in at the same time on Wednesday night for their 7:00 reservations. 

Two of them had the same last name and I thought they might be together.

But when I brought this up to the six of them waiting inside, they clearly had no idea who the other group was.

Meanwhile, the 4 top and the other 6 top are waiting outside.  I see them chatting but it truly NEVER occurred to me that they were together.  I thought they were two groups waiting to be seated that were talking to each other. 

I get the 6 people waiting inside seated. 

Then I seat the other 6 top in our gallery. 

About 90 seconds later the woman who checked in with that party comes to me and says, that the table is big enough that the waiting party can sit with them.  I explain that I had a table for them and would be getting them seated now.  She says, you have it all mapped out then and I assure her that I did.

It never fucking occurred to me they were together, until the server comes to me at the end of the meal and said that the woman said, I don’t understand why we couldn’t sit together because the table is clearly big enough. 

I was not rude.  I was not short.  I was not anything other than efficient.

I had no idea they knew each other until the server said something.  The other party had the same last name, that’s who I thought they were paired with.  But no it was the Irish table, with the international number. 

How the fuck could I know this?

Yes, the table is big enough for you to sit together.

Fun fact, the decision on who goes where involves far more than whether you’ll fit. 

Also, you booked after I changed the message on our reservation system that said, do NOT make two reservations and expect to sit together.  We’ll honor the reservation but we will not move you to a common table. 

Also, if you’d told me you wanted 10 adults to sit together, I’d have had you email me and there would be an email chain following your requests for a table of 10.  This does not exist. 

And,

Also, let’s break this down:

The front of house manager is rude, (you didn’t speak with me, the woman from the other party spoke to me) intolerant of requests, (I said no, I would have said no if I’d known as well, but saying no doesn’t make me intolerant of requests), unaccommodating (unless I am mistaken, you were seated based on the reservation you made and seated on time I might add) and frankly, just plain ignorant. (This is the one that pisses me off.  How?  Why?  What do you know about me that makes me ignorant?  You don’t know me).   He refused a very reasonable request to seat our together despite there being ample space. (Was it reasonable?  Really?  You are mad as was everyone else this summer that you tried to skirt the system and didn’t get what you wanted), His demeanour , attitude and deliberate unhelpfulness need to be addressed.  (I can’t even with this shit.  I can’t.  I now know why they all seemed angry when they left and wouldn’t respond to my questions on how they enjoyed their meal).

I am angrier about this than I have been all summer.  The people who called me a fucking bad manager were bad but this is worse.

I am very tempted to reach out to the woman I spoke to about being moved together to explain why things went the way they did.  I probably won’t but I’d like to. 

And in what world does a person think someone needs to be fired, just because they were told no.