I’d like to speak to the manager!!!

At 5:05 tonight a woman walks in.  

I say hello to her and ask if she has a reservation.

She says hello back and says, yes she does.    

I ask the name, she tells me…I can’t find it. 

I ask the name again, and she tells me suggesting it might be under a different name.

Ultimately, I can’t find the reservation so I ask all the questions:

Did you get a confirmation?

What phone number did you use (sometimes its the wrong date, or time).

Did you enter your credit card information.

And that’s when she says no, she didn’t.  She didn’t feel comfortable doing that. 

Ahhh.  

You clicked on the date and time, started the process, didn’t finish it and now you are here.

I say I’m sorry, if you didn’t enter your credit card you won’t have a reservation.

I assure her that it’s okay, I can get them seated.

And I do.  

Four of them. At table #22. 

And I go back to being a hostess.  

About 16 minutes later, a man who looks like Joel Grey,  appears at my host stand, placing his glass of red wine right in the middle of it.  

He says that he’s here to discuss something with me.

I realize eventually that he’s from table #22.  

He says to me, that he was really put off today, when the reservation system asked for his credit card information.  He assures me that we are losing customers because we are asking for credit card numbers. Most people will be put off by this and he assures me it’s bad for business.

I listen as he continues. 

He dines at the best restaurants in Denver and Pittsburgh and Cincinnati and no one has ever asked for his credit card information, and we ultimately need to stop this practice.

I try to explain why we take credit cards but he shushes me and keeps talking.  

I’m not exaggerating. 

He held up his finger like Diane Wiest in Bullets Over Broadway, and shushed me.  

He assures me that the business we lose by taking credit card information would more than cover the people that no show.  

He tells me that we should just write down the number and tell people our cancellation policy without taking the code and the expiration date.  

I try explain that to ACTUALLY charge people, it’s a financial transaction and I have to have all the information.

He assures me that just threatening to charge them would ensure a contract between the gues and us and they would indeed always show up.  

Finally, he runs out of steam and goes back to his table.

Fast forward an hour or so and Joel Grey appears in front of me again, sans red wine.

He tells me he’s here to apologize.

He had no idea when he entered the establishment, what caliber of restaurant we were.  He thought we were a casual, non-descript restaurant.  He now knows, based on the menu, the prices, the service, and the food, that we are a five-star restaurant.  

He continues, it makes sense for us to take credit cards, considering the caliber of restaurant we are.  

He brings up his favorite restaurant in Denver again, letting me know that they take his phone number and text him the day before, 30 minutes before, and a few minutes before, to remind him that he has a reservation.  

I assure him that if they’d ACTUALLY made a reservation, he’d have had the same experience today.  

And just like that he disappeared again.