‘We’ll have you a table in a couple of hours. I hope you don’t mind waiting.’
November 20th, 2008 by Cliff Bostock in Food & LifeI detest waiting in line for a restaurant table and 30 minutes is about my max. I don’t drink, so I can’t get drunk and make new best friends during the process.
CNN reports on some psychology studies about waiting in line and has lots of recommendations. Unfortunately, they are all about ways businesses can make waiting more tolerable for customers, not ways customers can deal with the boredom themselves in the absence of distractions.
My own methods include toting books to restaurants and, when really desperate, seizing the opportunity to practice “mindfulness.” But I’d rather be eating, dammit.
November 21st, 2008 at 4:38 am
I am polite and mindful of delays and distractions in the restaurant industry. But if I have made a reservation, if it goes longer than fifteen/twenty minutes, then I feel as though the restaurant itself feels that I and my party are so unimportant that they don’t need me. So they must not. And I let my party know I have a place up the street or two streets over that we can go. It may not be the same experience but at least I know that we have a better chance of being treated nicer.