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.