Grandma's Travels and Thoughts

“Can we sit at that table over by the window instead?” seems such a simple request. Recently we saw how impactful that little question can be on the life of a waiter.

The first incident we created. We had reservations for the Italian restaurant at our all-inclusive Mexican resort, arriving on time. The restaurant was busy, with one table for two still available in the front veranda with the large windows. We love to sit by windows so when the hostess started to take us to the larger back room, we immediately pointed to that table and asked to sit there. She gave us the “look”, the one that says why can’t you just sit where I want to put you, but shrugged her shoulders in resignation and led us to the table.

After arranging napkins in our laps and scanning the menu QR code, we looked for the waiter, who was taking orders from a large table of about 10 people to our right. He was a slight young man, maybe 18 or 19, and new to the restaurant, as I’d not seen him there before. I scanned the other tables in our area, noticing all eight tables were full. Slightly in front of the large party was a table with two people about our age, 60 to 80 range, sitting with their napkins and phones, but as yet no drinks and a disgruntled look on the blonde woman’s face. Of the eight tables there, everyone else seemed to have at water or a drink and some were eating salads or soups.

After deciding on which wine to order, my husband and I discussed what was happening back home, plans for the next day, etc. Suddenly I realized about 20 minutes had passed without the waiter coming to our table, as we had no water or drinks yet. As I looked around for him, I noticed the other older couple also had no drinks on their table and the woman was looking for the waiter. As our eyes met, a meaningful shake of her head let me know she was very unhappy with the service, or lack of service, she was receiving. The waiter went past our table, murmuring that he would be back, as he headed to the kitchen.

The waiter was back and forth between several tables with plates of food from the kitchen. The large party had children and several insistent requests for service from him. Another twenty minutes and he had not made it to our or the other couple’s table. I could see the blonde woman’s head bent close to her husband’s and her whole body was shaking as she was emphatically saying something to him. Next he stood up, pushing his chair in, after which she rose, leaned both hands on the table and announced in a loud commanding voice to the entire restaurant, “I want everyone to know that this is the worst service we have ever had at any restaurant. This is not the way we expect to be treated at this resort. We have sat here nearly an hour and have never been waited on. We will never return to this restaurant again and we will let the resort know how unhappy we are.” She straightened up, threw her purse strap over her shoulder, took her husband’s arm, and they headed towards the exit. The waiter stood by the large party, looking shell-shocked. The hostess, of course, stopped the couple and began apologizing. The manager suddenly appeared from the back room, offering apologies as the distraught couple exited the restaurant.

At our Mexican resort restaurants, the waiters always have designated tables and are very posessive of their tables. You do not see different waiters helping each other out, until that night. Suddenly the manager had another experienced waiter there, getting us water, taking our drink orders, and checking on each of the eight tables to see what they still needed. After about 20 minutes of assistance, during which we did get our water and wine, our original waiter, with sweat sheening across his forehead and his hands shaking, was there to take our salad order. And yes, we tried to be very kind to him and we did leave him a big tip, believing we were the proverbial last straw, or table, that broke him. And no, I never saw him working at the restaurant again.

The next night, at a different restaurant in the resort, we took the table the hostess led us to. Next to us was a table set for three people and over by the window was a table set for four. We were drinking our wine and people watching. The hostess brought a group of three people to the table set for three. They immediately shook their heads and pointed to the table by the window, walked over to it and sat down. The poor hostess shrugged her shoulders and gave them menus. Soon she is bringing in a group of four people, who now have to squeeze around the small table rejected by the group of three people while the hostess looks for another place setting for them.

Having both caused and seen the chaos created when people override the hostess’s table choice, you certainly would not expect us to ever cause issues again. Wrong.

There were four of us, none of us small people, so when the hostess took us to a small square table set for four, we knew it would be a tight squeeze. Yes, we should have carefully analyzed which tables were empty, but fast thinking took over and my husband pointed to a nice big table with four settings, next to a window. The hostess did not look happy with our choice, an obvious clue we should have heeded. Once seated, it was obvious that our new table, although near the original, was in a different waiter’s service area. And that waiter already had a huge party laughing and drinking around a long table. Meanwhile, there were plenty of empty tables in the section the hostess had tried to seat us in.

You know the resulting scenario. As our waiter rushes up, quickly grabbing a drink order, he apologizes for being so rushed and mentions the large group he’s working with. There is a salad bar, so we help ourselves to that. No bread arrives – we understand. No drinks arrive – we stop the waiter taking care of the section our original table was in and ask him if he can bring us some drinks, which he does, and we tip him graciously for doing so. Finally, about 45 minutes later, we are able to give our waiter a food order. Some of the food comes out – some of it never arrives. There is no opportunity to order dessert. We order more drinks from the other waiter, providing him ongoing tips for helping us out. Our actual waiter never returns to our table, likely embarrassed by the lousy service. At least there are no blonde women standing and proclaiming to the entire restaurant how lousy the service is. We deservedly feel bad and leave a tip on the table for our embarrassed waiter as we leave.

So now we plan to sit at the table the hostess takes us too. Unless, maybe, the restaurant is totally empty!!