Please Don't Say You're Sorry
The other night I went out for dinner with friends, and just to be safe I thought I'd call to make reservations. The girl on the phone told me that they "don't do reservations at night, er like, yeah we don't do reservations ever". Alright, I understand that I've gotta wait like everyone else, but why the stuttering on reservation policy? Let's just say the phone call was both the first crack in their impecable ice sculpture, and a little bit of foreshadowing.
When we got to the restaurant we were seated right away, but we still had five more people coming so the waiter started us off with drinks. When he came to the table the second time he asked if the RESERVATION was for more than three people, considering the booth was so big. Now, I'm not really one of those crazed and enraged I'm-gonna-make-your-shift-a-living-hell type, so I thought I'd deal with this in a slightly oblivious way. "Reservations?" I questioned. "What do you mean, reservations? We were told that you didn't do reservations...ever." I could see the subtle look of "I'm-in-shit" float across his face but he didn't pause or even stutter when he told me that "sometimes we have to tell people that there aren't reservations because too many people already have them and we have a quota." This guy was good, he put on his charming waiter smile, the kind that says "hey, I'll throw in a an extra 2grams of fries...for free, and "Is that a new shirt because you look amazing," all while balancing a series of plates on his arms and hands. I figured that he was just the messenger and therefore, we probably shouldn't shoot him, but that doesn't mean we didn't hackle him a bit. My friend calmly asked him "if we had told you that Gwenyth Paltrow would be in our party, would that have changed anything? Is there anyone else you could recomend?" He let a suave laugh escape before granting us the pensive and sincere pause to think that we truly deserved. He looked up at us, and in his eyes I detected the first sliver of uncertainty in him I had seen all night. He must have been wondering at that moment just how well we'd take what he was about to say. In a rare moment of honesty, he meekly uttered "A lot of people like Madonna?"
When we got to the restaurant we were seated right away, but we still had five more people coming so the waiter started us off with drinks. When he came to the table the second time he asked if the RESERVATION was for more than three people, considering the booth was so big. Now, I'm not really one of those crazed and enraged I'm-gonna-make-your-shift-a-living-hell type, so I thought I'd deal with this in a slightly oblivious way. "Reservations?" I questioned. "What do you mean, reservations? We were told that you didn't do reservations...ever." I could see the subtle look of "I'm-in-shit" float across his face but he didn't pause or even stutter when he told me that "sometimes we have to tell people that there aren't reservations because too many people already have them and we have a quota." This guy was good, he put on his charming waiter smile, the kind that says "hey, I'll throw in a an extra 2grams of fries...for free, and "Is that a new shirt because you look amazing," all while balancing a series of plates on his arms and hands. I figured that he was just the messenger and therefore, we probably shouldn't shoot him, but that doesn't mean we didn't hackle him a bit. My friend calmly asked him "if we had told you that Gwenyth Paltrow would be in our party, would that have changed anything? Is there anyone else you could recomend?" He let a suave laugh escape before granting us the pensive and sincere pause to think that we truly deserved. He looked up at us, and in his eyes I detected the first sliver of uncertainty in him I had seen all night. He must have been wondering at that moment just how well we'd take what he was about to say. In a rare moment of honesty, he meekly uttered "A lot of people like Madonna?"
posted by lowercasecarmen at 10:55 AM
1 Comments:
i dont remeber it quite like that, but i wasnt on an 23 day heroin binge either...
The food was quite good though!
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