I don’t know about you but this always seems like a good idea at the time. Mom doesn’t have to cook, there won’t be any kitchen cleanup or dishes to wash. Sounds good to me. I can aggravate my daughters by hoping that the menu states… “Eggs the way you like them…”. The family piles into the car and we are off to enjoy a meal together. The anticipation and hype of the event are far more interesting than the reality of actually going through the process. You arrive and, of course, there will be a wait. We will need to put our names on the list. When they design restaurants, they should have the waiting area in a location where you do not have full view of the dining area. There are several things that are irritating if you are paying attention. First of all, we are all in a “party”. Sounds pretty festive. I didn’t realize that I was actually in a party until I was called by the hostess. Having said that, you need to do several things to keep your sanity. Don’t pay attention to when fellow waitee’s arrive and are seated. There is no rhyme or reason regarding when you are called. The integrity of “the list” is at best a way for the hostess to control your life, absolutely. There are too many variables at play and you don’t need to let that bother you. Don’t check the waiting list, again you will only get upset. Especially when names are crossed out below your name. Finally, don’t let the fact that there are many open tables in the restaurant, get under your skin. I am sure there is a good reason why you are kept waiting even though it appears that you could be seated in one of those empty tables. The reasons include, we don’t have any wait staff in that section, those employees haven’t shown up yet. The tables are dirty and we cannot let you sit at those tables until the buss people clean and reset them. I thought the other hostess was going to seat someone at those tables. Whatever the reason, none of those excuses seem to justify the fact that you are standing and waiting with 4 children that are close to losing it, if they must wait any longer.
Finally, the seating gods allow you to be seated. Then for some unknown reason you are escorted to a table in the back of the restaurant after passing 15 empty tables on the way. Really? Everyone in your “party” is asking you why we are passing by so many empty tables…my response…just keep moving. Next our waitress Brittany comes and sets the record for saying the greeting in unintelligible words. I am sure each time she is trying to beat her own record. The only words I can decipher are that her name is Brittany and she will be taking care of us. I don’t know your definition of taking care, but I am not sure that Brittany’s definition and mine are the same. When Brittany comes to the table to take our orders you pray to God that everyone is ready to order, no one has the luxury to say they need a few more minutes. Even, “eggs the way you like them,” didn’t seem that funny to me at that particular point in time. Before we actually get our food Brittany comes to our table with her friend Paisley and informs us that she will be taking a break and that Paisley will attend to our every need. It is not easy to say goodbye to Brittany, after all, she established herself as our waitress and did take our orders, she had a pretty good run. I understood every word of the turnover speech and didn’t have to listen to Paisley’s greeting speech which possibly would have been delivered with even greater speed than the one by Brittany. No matter.
In the future I might actually ask the hostess when a shift change is scheduled, so I would know the odds of a substitute wait person entering our eating event. Probably not, this is life in the fast lane. I can’t know all of this stuff and even if I was secure knowing whether Brittany would take a break or not doesn’t carve the outcome in stone anyway. She might have to leave us for any number of reasons, her boyfriend is unfriending her and she needs some time, morning sickness, she broke a nail… it could be any number of things. I simply don’t need to know, just roll with the punches and accept the fact that Brittany will not be “taking care” of us… it will be Paisley.
Here’s the thing, is it really important that I know when Brittany’s shift starts or how long she has been working that day? If her shift had started recently, then I could relax knowing that Brittany would, in fact, be taking care of us, not turning us over to a stranger named Paisley. Knowing that her break was going to happen during our meal might have been a piece of information that I should know. I guess we will find a way to move on with Paisley. She eventually brought our food and, after some prodding, our check. Most of the orders were correct and even though I know most of us felt a kind of bond to Brittany, we were able to go through the meal with Paisley taking care of us. I am really glad that Paisley didn’t take a break and introduce yet another wait person because I believe that it would have been difficult for our children to handle any further separation anxiety. One last point, the tip, how do you determine the tip amount. Do you just take the total bill and add a certain percentage. You can’t know how your tip will be broken down…will it be an even split between Brittany and Paisley or will Brittany get more because she was first on the scene. I cannot spend any more time on this minutia. We had our breakfast; I feel obligated to leave a tip and I will just let the chips fall where they may. Once I leave the parking lot all is forgotten. We soldiered through it and finished our outing. At the end of the day, I had to question why we even considered going out to eat, but I guarantee you that the pain of this experience will be forgotten and the next time I suggest that we go out to eat the whole family will be on board.
