The Unwritten Rules Of Dining Out -”All About Hosting”
“All About Hosting”
This edition is dedicated to the under-appreciated host. The host and his seaters control the flow of the whole restaurant by timing when each party is sat so that the kitchen doesn’t get overwhelmed and collapse. For the most part it’s a brainless job. Efficient seating can be figured out by anyone simply by hard work and logic. It’s a stellar host with skills that comes into play on those Friday and Saturday night when there’s a two hour wait and a line out the door. A restaurant with a lot of volume will often have a lead host who controls the ship and his seaters who fulfill whatever the lead host would dictate needed. On top of making sure everyone gets seated in an orderly fashion, the lead host must answer phones, calculate sizes of parties with available (or soon to be available) seating, giving accurate wait times, keeping track of his seaters (where they hell did they go this time?), and whatever disasters might happen. Basically, for the entire night, this lead host will have five or more constant thoughts of what to do in his head at any given point. Not everyone can handle this role in hosting. On the busiest of nights, it truly can be one of the hardest jobs in the restaurant.
There are people that make this job harder than it’s supposed to be. There’s one in particular that frustrates me so much because it is so easily avoidable. Know how many people are in your party. If you are a party of eight, say so. Don’t say six people, wait for an hour (we’ll prepare a good spot for you party’s size), get seated, and then mention that you have two more coming. Think of a restaurant like Tetris. I have to figure out how everyone is going to fit properly. This guy ruined an hour of planning by not bringing that to my attention beforehand.
Babies count too. A person might say they have a party of four, but they don’t care to mention their young kids. I’ll prepare a spot for a party of four and come to find out he didn’t count his kids. Hey man, they have to sit too. They count. Sadly, this happens almost nightly.
Do not bribe me! You will get sat when it is your turn. And what’s more pathetic is when you say you’ll, “Hook me up” if I seat you earlier and you want to throw a five dollar bill in my direction. Um, wow dude.
Did you know that you can specify where you want to sit beforehand? Crazy right? You can actually request a booth, window seat, four seater, basically anything. We’ll accommodate you in any way you’d like. It sure would save a lot of time if you made these requests when you signed in an hour ago. I can’t stand when it’s in the middle of Friday night, the restaurant is jamming and the last thing we need is to bring someone to a table and for them to bitch about the seat. Sorry, this is the one that is available at this very moment. Now you have to wait for this magical seating arrangement you so desire because you didn’t let us know beforehand. I have now wasted time in getting that servers table sat because I need to find another patron for it and this guest has also started their experience not in a good way, but hey, it’s not our fault. Plan ahead dude. I’ll take care of you.
The last thing I must absolutely talk about is the phone. It rings off the hook and can get very frustrating, but hey, that’s part of the job. The part I can’t stand is the improper phone etiquette. It’s the mumblers and rude people. Here’s a real example that happened to me (the middle of the conversation):
Me: “And your name is..?”
Person: “Brnh”
Me: “I’m sorry?”
Person: “Brnh”
Me: “Um, can you spell that for me?”
Person: “B rh ohdfkjdsflkakjlsdafljk;adsf”
Me: (something I shouldn’t have said) “Can you enunciate that for me?”
*Person hangs up*
Back story is that we had a somewhat decently understood conversation up til that point. Yes I was rude in asking for them to enunciate, but hey if I can’t understand you, maybe you should give the effort to speak more clearly. I believe they were trying to say ‘Brown’, but I’m not sure. A good analogy for this would be when you can’t hear someone because they are speaking very very softly. You ask for them to please speak up. Then, they TALK AT THE SAME EXACT VOLUME! Wow, just, wow.
Funny how people have no trouble talking to their friends, but have issues when making the reservations. Moral of the story is, just have a bit of respect, let us know when you are coming, and how many to expect.. When you show up, we’ll respect you as well. Enough said.