To the old lady who tells her old lady friends she'll meet them at the restaurant, only to leave them (and their server) awkwardly waiting at the table without ordering for a ridiculous amount of time. "Is she going to show up?" "I don't know, she said she would..." "Should we order, or wait longer?" "I'm not sure, maybe we should try to call her again...":
ARE you going to show up? Not only does this leave your friends in an awkward and slightly uncomfortable situation, but you also leave their server in an awkward and slightly uncomfortable situation. It is our JOB to take care of guests sitting at our tables, and when we have guests sitting for a long, long time without ordering, what are we supposed to do? Continue bringing bread so they fill up on that? Stop checking on them because it sucks to continually have to reassure a server that they are fine, but just not ready yet?
If the guests are under a time constraint and they wait forever for you to show up....we can't hurry the cooking process. Your well-done steak is still going to take 20 minutes. Chicken still has to cook for a specific amount of time so you don't die from salmonella poisoning. That's a real thing!
Further, WHEN you show up, and your server is dealing with a party of 6 or 7 or...21, we have a lot to do other than hurry to your table the instant you decide to grace your friends with your presence.
FURTHER, when a server works in a restaurant with a set amount of tables allowed, and your friends show up 30 minutes before you do, that takes one of our tables out of rotation and we make way less money than we should/normally do/need to. So when you, old lady, show up LATE to your already-seated party, you order a tiny, tiny lunch that costs $12, and leave less than 10% of that because you think that's still a lot of money, we as servers HATE YOU. We got bills, too. And we make $2.13 an hour outside of tips. So when you cause your sweet old lady friends to take up one of our precious tables for an hour and leave far less than you should...we just can't rock that.
So it leaves us all in a lurch. Solution? Show up all at once! If you MUST be late, don't show up more than 5 minutes after your friends arrive. Or, if you're going to be a long while, make sure your friend(s) know that so they don't go sit down and wait awkwardly at a table where a seething, furious server has to watch every other server on shift at the time make twice as much as he or she.
This rant is based on past personal experience and/or past experience of other servers in various restaurants. If you think this is about you, you should remember that any resemblance or similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. And you should also probably take a good, long look in the mirror before you go out to eat again.
Just in case.
I have taken up a table for a long time before but I figure you are supposed to tip on the time as well as the food. I have given a 10$ time on a meal that was 5$ cause I sat there for 2 hours. they fought over me once at Applebees in wincherster with Tiffy, cause all we ate was 1/2 price appitizers, got coffee refills when you passed and sat and talked then both of us tipped well. Maybe we need to visit the lob, for a sit talk some time. :)
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