Joiners

It is Sunday, just before our lunch rush begins. My first table of the day is a twelve top. Only two people are here for their party. “The others will be here in a minute.” Is what they tell me. Fifteen or twenty minutes later, my next table of eight shows up, of which only two are present. Six more people for the twelve come in, I get their drink orders and then go and talk to the eight, of which all have arrived  and are ready to order. I then get another table of eight of which only four are present and I get their drink orders. My first table of twelve of which there is only nine is now ready to order and says  the other people are not coming. I go and put in their order, and then go to the kitchen and grab my first eight top’s food, and hand it out. I get them drink refills, more chips, and anything else they might need. I check on the three tables I currently have, and the go and get the twelve top’s food, and hand it out.

Up to this point everything is flowing OK. My twelve top and eight top have their food and are almost done, and my other eight top is still waiting on the rest of their party. I hand my eight top their checks, and my twelve top their checks. I now get my fourth table, which is a six. This is the first table where everyone for the party is present.

Here is where I lose control of my section. The other three people from the twelve shows up and the other four people from my second eight top show up. Within a matter of five minutes , I need to cash my twelve top out, cash my eight top out, take my second eight top’s order, take my six top’s order, and somewhere in between squeeze these three people in. So this girl (from the three that just sat down) raises her hand to get my attention. I tell her, “I will be with you in just a second.” I franticly cash out both of my tables. While I am doing this, I hear comments from the three people about how it is going to take thirty minutes before I get to talk to them. Because of this, I take their order first, and then my second eight top, and my six last. This is sad because the six top was the only table where everybody was here when they sat down and are probably going to get the worst service out of all these tables, and they did everything right. So I hand out all the tables food in succession, while juggling drink refills, chip refills, and trying to keep disgruntled customers happy, of which like I explained, came from the six top. Once I regained control, I handed out everybody’s checks, and cashed them all out at the same time, and they all left at the same time.

Usually this is how business flows when what I like to call “joiners” are involved. My definition of a joiner is a party that is seated and not all of their party is present. I am guilty of this just like all of us are. I am now aware of this, because am on the receiving end of this behavior. Most restaurants are now implementing policies to where if all of your party is not present you can not be seated. My restaurant has not.

This is probably not going to change how you handle things when you go out to eat, but just remember that if you are going to do this, the chances that you are not going to get good service drastically increase. Restaurants have a system for seating tables so that their customers get the best and most efficient dinning experience. When you throw a wrench into this system, it doesn’t flow correctly and that is when mistakes are made, and the quality of your dinning experience is reduced.