I’d like to speak to the manager!!!

It’s still only a few days past August.  

The remnants of Angry August still exist.  

I can’t remember if I’ve spoken about the 8th month being called Angry August. Every one calls it that, though.  

Tonight, I was on the patio and a woman I met this weekend, comes up with a friend.  

She says, I bet you are glad August is behind us. Angry August is the worst.

I say, ahhh. You must be in the business if you know that term. 

We chat.

The friend who is with her, is the man who bought her inn. She is no longer in the business.  

We all stand there and talk commiserating on how bad it actually is.  

How glad we are that things will slow down and become less “angry.”  

I excuse myself and head back inside.  

Angry August is a real thing. And there are still signs of its presence.  

The third table we sat tonight after opening, was a couple with a small child. They had made a reservation for 2 people. They can’t sit at their reserved table because it only has 2 chairs.  

We move them to a 4 top table.

A server takes them in. And reappears 45 seconds later to say they want to sit at a booth.  

I explain that it can’t happen.  

She goes away and returns 90 seconds later. They want to speak with me.  

I go to the table. And say, hello. May I help you?

The woman is in attack mode. 

She says that the server told them that they can’t sit at one of the booths because they are reserved. I concur that yes they are.  

She pushes back, that there was no option to pick a booth when the reservation was made.

I explain that we don’t let people choose their tables, but in this case, the requests had been made and have been granted.

She pushes back, well there was nowhere to put in a request.  

I assure her that there was.  

The husband says, I can’t believe you won’t let us move. It’s our anniversary.  

I apologize but again explain that the tables are reserved.

They both get huffy with me. I say I’m sorry. And leave.

May I point out at this time, that their reservation was made at 2:00 today. The reservations at those tables were planned out an hour before they booked.  

I don’t ever get into with a guest but we’d started service. The ball was in motion. There is a whole host of reasons, why things can’t change that are not visible to the naked eye.  

Three minutes later their server appears and wants to know if they can move outside.

Why yes. Yes they can.

And move they did.

It seems they only come to our restaurant on their anniversary according to their history. Which is great. But book ahead.

Now.  

Back to Angry August.

Around 6:30 I walk up to the host stand and there is a man there speaking with the host.

He is apologizing to her.  

I say nothing, I just listen.

He turns to me and says, I owe you an apology as well. I came in last week, got angry, tried to slam your front door and stormed out.  

I have no idea who this man is.

I ask him when this happened.

He was a week ago.

I assure him that I have no memory of it, and so it must not have been as bad as he thought.

We chat for a bit and I realize he’s the husband of the woman that I was speaking with on the patio that mentioned Angry August. Her husband was an angry person.

He keeps apologizing and finally leaves.

Then my host explains who he is.

Last week a man comes into the restaurant to make a reservation.

She asks for his phone number and he says he won’t give it to her. He’ll only give his name.

I’m standing there and explain that the only way we can make a reservation is with a phone number.

He starts shouting about not wanting to get text messages about his reservations. Works himself up and then storms out.  

I’d never have remembered this is she hadn’t told me.

All of this over text messages.  

The funny thing is, it’s really easy to turn off our text notifications. So easy. In fact in a worse case scenario, block the number.  

And this is what he yelled about last week.

And apologized for tonight.

It really was mild in comparison.