Sunday, January 1, 2012

please erect your tent if you intend to camp


Two ladies sit together in a booth, dinner has been ordered, served and cleared; coffee and dessert are long reduced to crumbs and rings on the table.  The bill has sat untouched for almost an hour and the conversation rages on...

It's been so long since you've seen each other, I know, you just want to relax and catch up and enjoy each other's company, I get it.  But what you are not considering is that you are reducing my income significantly by taking up a table long after you have eaten.

You see, in most restaurants each server has a section which is comprised of a specific number of tables.  Those tables represent the potential income, not only for the establishment in which you find yourselves, but more directly for the server in that section.  When you forge your way past lingering into the realm of camping we begin to get upset.

As with any industry there is an assumed amount of time it takes to process an order or deal with a client, the same goes for the restaurant biz, there is an average amount of time that it normally takes to 'turn the table'. Some other occupations charge by the hour so that they do not have to concern themselves with potential campers, we don't have that luxury.  Restaurants do not rent you a table for a specific fee but they do expect that once you have finished dining and enjoying the offereings of said restaurant that you will pay your bill and be on your way so that the next table may be given the same opportunity.

If you are planning to stay for the duration of an afternoon or evening it would be courteous to inform your server and perhaps include a little extra when it comes to paying the bill so that he/she does not lose out on a significant amount of income from that table.

Stratford is filled with lovely independent coffee shops that provide an atmosphere to linger in, have a few lattes and catch up on the last 20 years of your life there perhaps?

4 comments:

  1. "If you are planning to stay for the duration of an afternoon or evening it would be courteous to inform your server and perhaps include a little extra when it comes to paying the bill so that he/she does not lose out on a significant amount of income from that table."

    I only agree if MORE WORK is being done during the extra time. If the customers do not want ANYTHING for let's say an hour that they stay extra, WHY should you get to be paid to do absolutely NOTHING for that hour, huh?

    That's unfair. Tips are for ****SERVICE******, NOT for staying long.

    If you lose out on another table, that other table or tables may not have tipped you anyways, HOW do *YOU* KNOW? You don't, that's the way it goes. If you don't like it, DON'T BE A SERVER!!

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  2. What sort of freakish people sit around in restaurants for an hour without drinking anything? I would say after less than half that time it counts as loitering and you can call the cops.

    Springs1 - a trashy last paragraph.

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  3. As a Cook I often hear the ramblings of managers and wait staff bitching about customers, tips and your whole life in general. Shut up and take the damn order and leave us alone.

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