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Wednesday, April 06, 2011
Dilly-dallying at a restaurant
Non-sports post.
Yes, 2 hours and 15 minutes at a restaurant is a bit excessive if you are (presumably) not still ordering. I had two situations when I was kicked out.
The first was at a TGIF (somewhere in midtown Manhattan). I was sitting at the bar, not a table. And I ordered a plate, a meal. Probably 9.95$ or something like that. I was probably done in about 30 minutes, but I was watching something on their TV, and it was going to take an hour. So, I still had 30 minutes of show I wanted to watch. The bartender came over and said “if my boss sees you not eating or drinking, he’s going to get on my case for not kicking you out”. I was in shock. Had I just ordered a beer, drank for a half hour, and ordered a second one, or even just nursed the first one for an hour, no problem (and only $4). I don’t remember what I did. I think I hung around for a few more minutes, and then left.
The second was at a bar, and there were three of us, and two of them were quite drunk (I’m a very light drinker). We were ordering shots or pitchers one after the other. Probably spent at least 100$ over two hours. And we had a lull of about 15 minutes where we weren’t drinking, just yapping. So the owner walks over and says something. We ignored him, and then he slammed the table “I haven’t seen a pitcher hit this table in 20 minutes! Get out of here!” They had to drag one of my buddies out.
Seeing that my parents used to own a restaurant, and I’ve had friends as waiters/waitresses (*), I understand that the faster the flow, the more the money, if you have people waiting. But, this has to be balanced against how much money was already spent, and not how much money is expected to be spent in the next 30 minutes. Because if you don’t recognize all the past money, you will simply lose the customer. Being early spenders as we were (rather than spreading it out over the night) shouldn’t be held against the customer.
(*) Can’t I call them all waiters? why is that word not gender-neutral?
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