Drunken Spectacle of Rage!

Have I not seen that show before?
Perhaps I have even auditioned a few times in my day...


Drunken Spectacle of Rage!Have I not seen that show before? Perhaps I have even auditioned a few times in my day...

P.F. Chang's was an interesting place to be last night. Saturday night is usually the busiest night of the week for all restaurants and hospitality establishments. Last night was certainly no exception. We were running on close to a two and a half hour wait. Reservations were booked from 6 pm until 9pm before the restaurant even opened yesterday morning. Our situation became all the more interesting when a reserved party of 12 arrived at the restaurant at 7pm (three hours before they were due to be seated at 10pm), only to inform us that more people would be joining their party. The one guest asked if we could move their reservation to another time slot for that evening. By that time, everything was booked in terms of reservations for the rest of the evening. As a result, we explained to their representative that we would have to cancel their reservation and put them on a wait list in order to accommodate the rest of their party. That is exactly what we ended up doing.

One of the other hosts grabbed a pager and put the party on a 2 hr and 15 minute wait. As a result, all of them went upstairs to the bar and drank themselves into a frenzy. They kept walking back downstairs to check and see if their tables were ready yet. We explained to them that they would have to wait until the party that was sitting at their table was done eating dinner. Afterall there was already another party of 12 sitting there, who had previously made their reservation in advance and did NOT cancel out at the last minute as a result of additional people coming. They got there first and they still had to finish their meal. When the time came for the drunken party of 12 to be seated, it was already much later than the approximate time we told them they would be seated.

They ended up getting seated around 10pm (their original reservation time). Obviously they were aggravated as a result of the time they had to wait in order to be seated and served. We apologized for the inconvenience, but sometimes one has to expect that when you cancel your reservation on a Saturday night at the last minute and place yourself on the waiting list with a pager. We are primarily a walk-in restaurant, but reservations are first priority.
This gets better.

Immediately after the lushery convention finally wrapped up their evening of dining and drinking (yes, they did not stop), the man of the group who cancelled the reservation in the first place came up to us at the host stand and said, "The food made the wait well worth it!" He continued, "the only thing was, you shouldn't have told us you were going to seat us at 9pm and then seat us at 10pm because then we have to wait around for too long and I had to take a lot of shit from the rest of the group because they were getting restless. A few of the people in my party are in the restaurant business, so we know how these things work. We will be back though."

Again, we apologized for the inconvenience, taking into account the adage that "the customer is always right." We are also a brand new restaurant that recently opened up and there are certainly kinks that need to be worked out. On the other hand, when a party decides to cancel their reservation in order to be placed on a wait, they run the risk of falling behind on the list and waiting a little longer. Everything in the restaurant is run on a first come, first serve basis.

Shortly afterwards one of servers went up to the guy who was talking to us after the meal and showed him a charred napkin that had been burnt at the table. I still fail to grasp the logic behind the server's decision to do that. All of a sudden the guest says in a loud tone of voice, "Maybe if we didn't have to wait so fucking long to eat, we wouldn't have gotten bored enough to have to burn napkins" The server responded, "Well we were running on a two hour wait sir and you cancelled your reservation at the last minute." The guest was drunk and he started getting really angry as he raised his tone of voice at the server. He turned around to us and said, "Is his father the retarded firefighter??" Whatever the hell that meant. He added to that by saying, "Maybe if the little retard would learn to bus these fucking tables, we wouldn't have had to wait so long."

The server's assistant began to laugh as he helped the server clean the mess at the tables. That is when the drunken guest walks up to him and says, "You think that is funny??? Fuck face! You got something to say to me??? Why don't you go ahead and take a swing at me?? Hit me and you lose your job". That is when things really started to get out of control and I had to get the manager to come up and get him out of the restaurant. The manager applauded my actions and told me, "Good job, you did the right thing." Tell me this young dynamic pugilist of life does not have Operating Partner written all over his bright future????? LOL. I don't know about all of that. The Great One is certainly capable of such a destiny, but I just do not know if I want to stay in the restaurant business. We shall see what happens and you - my family, friends, and fans - will be the first to know.

Our restaurant has some flaws that need to be cleared up, as do many restaurants when they first open with a relatively inexperienced staff. Everyone makes mistakes and we must learn from making mistakes. Perhaps certain guests should take that into account when drinking too much alcohol at the bar and then spouting off at the mouth in public in front of families with children. If he really is in the restaurant business with his buddies as he stated they were, they should already know these circumstances. They should definitely know that it's inappropriate to get drunk in a public place and then start shouting obscenities at servers! In addition to all of that, a guest fiercely grabbed one of our female servers earlier in the evening and got a complementary meal as a result. I am not quite sure how that happened, but I suppose this is a learning process.

Wow that was a long story.

Hopefully I did not bore you (as exciting as I am, rarely do I ever pick up such a negative trait), but I just wanted to explain what can happen in such a place of business. This was quite a story and it is far from the last one that I will be telling you. The Great One is sure to come across some unique situations at his job and I will keep you informed as they all happen.

For now it is time to grab some lunch and head to work (perhaps another evening worthy of note, who knows?? ). Everyone take care and come again soon for more of the latest in the life of an individual who is HALF MAN and HALF AMAZING. 1 love.

Peace.