For anyone who doesn't know, I work in that lovely industry that helps all artists pay their bills -- hospitality. I work in the front of the house at a resort -- usually as the hostess at the premier, up-scale restaurant in the hotel.
Right now, we're in the summer season -- the tourist season -- the warm, sunshine-y, active season when people love to come and have fun, families hold reunions and weddings, companies host huge conferences, and local people actively frequent the amenities on their "stay-cations."
We are consistently over-booked on Friday and Saturday nights. We have to turn people away at the door for not having reservations. This is amazing to me because, as proud as we are of our facility and our restaurant, we aren't exactly a famous, big-city restaurant. It just so happens that we're one of the best in the state and pretty much the best option in the area.
Don't ask me why we get overbooked. To me, that's somehow totally preventable, but I really have no way of controlling it. The problem usually happens for three main reasons:
1. Large parties that plan out the details of their stay weeks (even months or years) in advance with the sales office sometimes have overlapping times and have to be seated in different areas of the restaurant other than the private dining areas usually reserved for large parties. And when I say "large party" I mean a party anywhere between 10 and 40 people. We often get groups of 20 to 30 people who expect a private area, which is extremely hard to accommodate on a busy night and especially a "booked solid" night.
2. The concierge, sales associates, and other people in the hotel who have access to the reservation system book reservations for their guests without paying attention to how many tables are still available or how many other people will be in the restaurant at that time. Often when I am confused about why a reservation was made the way it was or I see something that doesn't make sense, I look up who made the reservation and it is a name I don't even recognize.
3. When the restaurant is closed, calls are diverted to a mysterious "answering system" that I am very suspicious about. I have been diverted to this answering system myself. There is a rustling noise followed by a beep that one can only assume means, "Leave a message!" but there is no way that we are aware of to check these messages. And if by some miracle you get patched through to the manager's voice mail instead of the mysterious beep, you're still taking your chances because he may be in a meeting, distracted with another venue, or not even working that day. Often people will show up thinking they have a reservation ("I left a message three days ago!") and it is not in the system at all.
Add those people to the list that also includes VIPs and high-rollers that the casino hosts need to accommodate like it is a huge emergency, the people who start making an hour or two drive before they call to say they're coming, and the people who miraculously get in without a reservation because some manager or another wants to impress or accommodate them, and, BAM! You're overbooked.
We really do try very very hard to accommodate all of our guests in some way, but it requires a great deal of patience from everyone. We can handle the patience. It is our job to be patient and accommodating.
Guests aren't always so patient with us, though.
And one of the biggest problems on these busy nights with large groups is that we have to pull several smaller tables together to make one very large table. Large groups take up a lot of tables! So while you may be able to seat five or six "four-tops" and about eight "two-tops" in an area on a normal night, a bunch of those tables have disappeared on a night with a large group -- particularly if they want a private area.
This may sound disgusting, but I have learned that apologizing on these nights is not in the best interest of me, the restaurant, or the resort. I can usually pull off a simple, "Sorry for your wait," and then distract the guest with something that sounds like it would make up for it -- like an interesting fact about their table or how great their waiter is going to be.
However, a real, sincere apology nearly always makes me sound like I don't know what I'm doing or reflects poorly on the restaurant. I know that sounds backwards, but it is true. And you would not believe how hateful and impatient people get when they think that the people taking care of them don't know how to do their jobs!
Strangely, even though people may desire or expect an apology for an inconvenience like having to wait for a table when they had a reservation, they actually respond much better and have a better recovery from the experience if they're met with no-nonsense, unapologetic confidence.
For example, if I were to say, "I'm so sorry you had to wait on a table that long," they begin to wonder why they had to wait and might even ask. Any reason given or assumed is not good. What kind of restaurant gives away more tables than they have available? Can't they handle the amount of guests they try to accommodate? What is going wrong that makes it so they can't turn a table or reset it in the time they should?
And those uncertainties lead to questions and assumptions about the rest of the experience -- from where they are sitting to how good the food will be to the bill. Not good. If they expect the worst, they almost always find it.
Instead of apologizing, it is better to just not mention the mishaps and make it seem as if nothing went wrong -- that it was all under control from the beginning. As stated before, a quick and cordial, "I'm sorry for your wait," is fine, but a brilliant smile and personable conversation is a great way to get the experience back on track. Don't pretend a bad experience never happened, of course -- just find a way to make up for it as swiftly and smoothly as possible.
When someone's steak is undercooked, the servers swiftly remove it from the table and correct the issue. They don't make a big deal about it or place blame. They correct the issue and make sure the rest of the experience is pleasing.
If a table is ever so unhappy that we're ready to comp dessert (or even the whole meal - ouch!) chances are there is no going back.
At any rate, I've dealt with some rather hateful people on busy nights.
One night, I couldn't seat a table of five people because there were no tables for five available at the time. (Our tables seat two or four, generally. Often for a five-top we will add a chair and settings to a four top that will fit five, or push two tables together.) I kept watching a table that had opened up in the section near the door, but it wasn't getting bussed/reset. A couple of times, I walked through the restaurant to check for other tables that may have opened and been reset without my realization. Finally, I just left my area/job and bussed the table myself and pulled a chair up to it to accommodate five. As I seated the table, I offered a genuine apology for the wait. One of the ladies, without looking at me, said in a very loud and angry tone to the person next to her (though obviously directed at me), "I just don't understand how it can take 15 minutes to pull a chair up to a table!" For the rest of their dinner, every time I was nearby, she shot daggers with her eyes and commented hateful and even insulting things to the other people at her table about how terrible or stupid I must have been. The really insulting part was that they let her get away with it even though a couple of them looked guilty and even encouraged her to hush.
On a recent Friday night, as we opened the doors for service, already mostly booked for the evening, a lady walked in the doors to make reservations for two groups of nine. This request was honestly impossible. I politely informed her that we could accommodate nine people at six-thirty, but the next available time would have to be eight-thirty. She did not want to wait that long, so she reserved a spot for her group at six-thirty and her brother's group at eight-thirty. As she turned to leave she asked, "Is there a dress code?"
I answered with the response that my manager wants me to respond with. "Resort casual. A polo or collared shirt and khakis are fine." (Men are always more concerned with this than women because some restaurants require a suit jacket and/or tie.) She didn't seem to have a problem with that answer and left to inform her groups of their reservation times.
The second group called us a while later to tell us they were bringing 12 people, not nine. This was stretching us a bit, but nothing we wouldn't try to handle.
They called back a while after that to inform us they were bringing 16 people. Our manager informed them that we could not accommodate 16 people, and they compromised on 14.
At eight-thirty the man in charge of the group showed up in a tee-shirt and shorts, angry that we had a dress code. He informed us that he was not going to bring his 14 people in to eat unless he could wear his tee-shirt and shorts. He thought he had a lot of leverage with his 14 people who were about to buy 14 expensive dinners.
That didn't matter to us. We're all about pleasing our guests, so we told him that it was okay if he wore his tee-shirt and shorts. Our dress code is a request and we understand that on a vacation or day trip to a resort, people don't always plan their comfortable wardrobe for an expensive restaurant. So, yes, he could wear his tee-shirt and shorts.
We promptly moved to seat his party of 14 at their large table in the center of our best dining room. As we did, he informed us and his servers that they were going to pull up a couple of extra chairs to accommodate their 15th and 16th people and it would be fine. We smiled and said we would do our best to make it happen. He seemed perplexed, as if "doing our best" wasn't a good or confident enough promise. (Count out another table for two!)
They had a server that evening who has a reputation for being able to handle large groups of people without problems or needing assistance from others. I don't know what happened, but within ten minutes, the tee-shirt man had such serious problems that both the server and he left the table for a while, in opposite directions. Another server stopped by the table a while later to make sure everything was alright and was informed that he shouldn't smile at them.
As the guests left that evening past the hostess stand, I stood and smiled confidently. None of them even looked at me. Just when I thought I was in the clear, the man came back through our front door, looked directly at me and said in an accusing tone, "You should focus more on your service and less on your dress code." It actually took me a moment to figure out what he meant.
I get to hear about it all, and often get blamed for it all, from all sides. I either didn't seat enough people in the right section, didn't plan ahead well enough, or didn't bend over backwards enough.
Apologizing, in my experience, really does no good at all. Smiling confidently and explaining the facts of the matter, playing ignorant, or just not commenting at all seems to be the better option. So to anyone who expects an apology from me ... I'm sorry!
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