Is it so hard to open a new section?

The BBQ Pit
1

I go down to the hotel lobby for breakfast. I can feel my blood sugar dropping by the minute and I really need to eat. The section is jammed with people. The hostess tries to seat me at a narrow table jammed in between other diners with barely room to slip past and get into the chair, and I am a big guy and I have a newspaper, so I ask if there is a bigger table. She hems and haws and says, “I’ll have to open a new section, we are kind of short staffed today” and I respond “well, I’ll probably just do the buffet, so that doesn’t matter”. She leads me to the sign closing off the section in question. At this point her brain goes into some kind of flutter and she freaks out and she asks some guy something and then leads me to the only other available table in the open section, a huge table with like six chairs. By this time there are SEVERAL OTHER GROUPS waiting for a table so I ask, “Where are you going to seat them?”

By this time I am done with her and I walk out. I go upstairs and get my jacket and go to the hotel next door, where, lo and behold, they manage to seat me at a nice table without acting like it is some kind of freaking imposition.

Why does it always seem like opening another section in a crowded restaurant is an act of similar gravity to declaring war? Move the sign aside, and assign the table to one of your existing wait staff, numbnuts! It’s a friggin buffet so all they really have to do is bring me the bill for crying out loud! Just dumb.

2

Sounds like you are not such a happy wanderer…

3

Well I suppose they have to worry about cleaning another section too, but yeah I ate at Golden Corral (a big buffet place) last weekend and it was so freakin crowded I felt like cattle going to slaughter. Ironic I know.

4

I suppose it’s because wait staff can only give decent service to a limited amount of tables. Make a server have to cover an additional section, and they will get shitty service, and so will the customers in the server’s original section(s).

Some folks must think there’s a crate of servers/bank tellers/whatever in a back room somewhere to pull people out of. I never worked in the service industry, but I know you can’t just open a new restraurant section or supermarket checkout lane or bank teller position unless there’s staff to cover it.

5

It’s a BUFFET.

She had already offered me a table, so she was going to use a server’s time anyway. I guess it would cause the server’s brain to fry if one of the customers is ten feet to the left.

Well, this is an annoyance that has always gotten to me over the years, and when I am hungry and being thwarted, no I am not so happy :wink: I just want to read my paper in peace and not be wedged in between some herbalife salesmen and the geriatric couple from omaha and have try to balance the paper in one hand and eat with the other. I like my space and I am sure I am not the only one.

Plus there was a line forming behind me so she was going to have to do something. More people were heading in as I walked out as well, so I guess she makes them wait. Not a good thing to subject people to at a hotel by the airport where people want to grab a quick bite before they catch a plane out.

The competitor had a large dining room, but no areas were roped off, and they didn’t try to jam everyone together. Somehow they were able to figure out things without this rigid “section” mentality. Some restaurants use it rigidly, and some not at all, and y’know what? Both manage to take orders and get food to the tables. Why not give the customer the choice of where to sit? Your restaurant should be run to please the customers, not make it as simple as possible for the wait staff.

6

Which still needs wait staff, just less so. Perhaps they only had enough staff for the previously opened sections, even taking into account it’s a buffet.

There’s still a limit to how many tables a server can cover, it’s a just a higher limit for buffets. It’s not infinite.

What do think, they were just trying to annoy you personally?

7

She had already offered me a table as I said above, so she was going to use a server.

No, I think that she was following policy. It’s the policy that is silly. As I said, the competitor not only didn’t have closed sections (people were scattered all over the place, as people who are allowed to SIT WHERE THEY WANT tend to do, and were not all clumped up), she was even able to give me a table by the window with lots of natural light to read by. By this policy my hotel:

  1. Lost my food business today
  2. Lost my food business for the rest of my stay
  3. Is probably pissing off other people who don’t like to wait
  4. All for no reason other than a policy that puts the convenience of the staff above customer preference

In a ritzy place where that is part of the shtick I can understand it. Quite frankly, at a breakfast buffet at a three star hotel, really all they should do is tell you “sit wherever you want”. That is the case in other similar places that I have stayed, and somehow the staff figures out that when they see you sitting there you will need a menu, water , etc. But that would require that you hire people that aren’t moronic and give them proper training, God forbid. :rolleyes:

8

Which may have been a different server than the one that would have had to cover you in the new section. The server for the new section may have already been overtaxed, but the one covering the original table perhaps was not.

But hey, like I said before, I never worked in the service industry, let alone a restaurant. I’m sure lots of servers, past and present, are here on the board, if any of them come here and say it was unreasonable the way you were treated, I will bow to their first hand knowledge.

9

There was no server for the new section. Most of the work at a buffet is bussing anyway, and the busboys weren’t busy, they were just kind of hanging by the drink station until people finished. Again, if this is so hard to do, how come other places can do it and don’t get all anal when you have a reasonable request.

Another thing, their staffing issues aren’t my problem either. At a hotel they have a rough idea of how many people are going to be coming down for breakfast because they have the BOOKING INFORMATION well in advance, so what is the excuse? Restaurants that don’t have this early indicator can do just fine so WTF?

10

You asked why it was so hard to open a new section; I speculated it was because of lack of staff. I never claimed there was a good excuse for being understaffed.

Again, I await actual servers’ opinions to judge whether your gripe is justified.

11

Being a hostess is a tough job- the waiters hate you for over/under seating them and the customers hate you because they do not understand the inner workings of restaurants and assume that you don’t have a good reason for doing what you are doing. Hostesses get tipped by waiters, so they work really hard to keep waiters happy.

In my very busy restaurant, we had a binder with a bunch of different maps dividing the restaurants up in to sections. If we have 2 waiters, tables 1-20 are one section and tables 2-40 or another. we had maps for 2-10 waiters, each one carefully balanced to compensate for things like tables used when groups come in, etc. This map changes as people come and go and take breaks- usually every fifteen minutes or so.

So when the hostess seats you, she has to keep that map in mind. Her goal in seating people is to seat people evenly- making sure that everyone gets the same number of customers and that nobody gets two customers too close together. This is complicated by the fact that people leave their meals at different times. If she fails, which she is bound to do at some point, she loses out on the tips that likely make play a large role in her ability to eat, etc.

So if you introduce an element of chaos (seating someone out of turn, assigning a waiter to a table that’s not in their section, etc.) you can cause waves of chaos that last all day long. Waiters start fighting over tables, nobody knows where they are supposed to be working. People get seated and waiters don’t realize that that is now their section, people get slammed. everyone is confused etc. etc. Things can spiral down real fast and service may never quite recover that day. And the hostess walks home with no money in her pocket. So you learn pretty quickly not to do that.

12

…how do you know that the closed off sections weren’t reserved for those “other” groups that arrived for breakfast? Maybe she was reluctant to seat you there because the section had already been booked?

13

Wow. People sound really petty and childish in the restaurant biz. I thought in most places they had tip sharing where it all goes into a pool and is divided up by some formula at the end of the day. My brother has been in the biz forever and told me this was usual, so why all the squabbling? Another thing is that I tip well when I get good service. I know they can’t realize that when I am coming in, but I guess I will also pit those who are cheap with tips. If everyone tipped properly I think a lot of this would go away. I understand that it is hard work. I worked in a busy pool hall that served food for a while but the only tables we had to assign were for playing pool :wink: so we didn’t face this problem, but even so.

And what no-one has answered with all the excuses is how can some restaurants manage to seat patrons without this rigid “section” system? Even ones that are doing an identical service in the same place at the same price, etc. such as was my experience this very morning. :dubious:

14

The place doesn’t take reservations. This is causal dining. Think Denny’s. Except Denny’s always honors my request for a larger table, even if they have to seat me in a closed section.

15

…you seem awful sure of this hotel’s restaurant policy. What hotel was it?

…it was a different restaurant? As the hostess told you, the place was short staffed? Do you have any evidence that this hotel always has this “rigid section system?” Was it the first time you dined there, or had you eaten there before?

16

It is a three star hotel similar to Sheraton or Marriot or Hilton.

Similar hotel, similar dining rooms, similar buffet, similar price, similar number of people eating, similar location with one place not 50 yds down the block from the other. If anything, the staffing levels were higher at my hotel, the ones they had at the other were kept busier. And this isn’t just this place. I know restaraunts where it is always the policy to seat yourself for crying out loud, and others where they herd everyone into a little corner when business is slack. It is just madness in my opinion. Like I said, the only place I can see it is if you are going out to Le Dome or some place and it is the kind where the guy is all snooty and you have to slip him a few bills to get a good table, but in a frigging buffet at a hotel? Bah.

17

Even restaurants which normally don’t take reservations will often take them for large groups. They like to know in advance when 20 or 30 people are going to show up and want to be seated together.

18

I would guess that they did not have enough staff to cover the new section. Once they sat one person in it at one table, other people would come in and ask why they too couldn’t sit there. Pretty soon the “new” section is filled, the old section is filled, and everyone gets shitty service.

19

Look, there IS a method to the madness. Usually, resturants that have the seat yourself policies are smaller and slower than the ones that have a hostess at all times. This is because the smaller resturants are able to see where you actually sit (if it’s a huge place, like TGI Fridays or something, you can sit yourself in a dark little corner and go unnoticed for hours), and the one or two servers (I’ve never seen a really busy restaurant with lots of servers other than a buffet do a seat yourself thing) aren’t running from one end of a huge floor to the other.

And all places have section systems. A resturant can’t function without sections, it would be mayhem. They might not follow the system at all times of the day, but they all have sections, unless there’s only one server at all times.

And it’s not a matter of putting the servers preferences over the customers. A resturant owner will always put the customer above the server, and this situation is no different. The reason they can’t magically open another section that’s closed upon your demand is that each server has a certain amount of tables that they can handle. If all the sections are full, and they open up additional sections without having a server to staff them, the people sat in the new sections are going to get shitty service, along with the ones seated in the already open sections. So, in addition to losing your patronage, they’re also going to be losing the patronage of those who are seated in their actual section.

I’d personally rather just lose your patronage, since you seem pretty bitchy and demanding anyway.

20

…I can’t imagine a hotel restaurant not taking reservations for large groups, especially at a three star similar to the Sheraton or the Marriot. That’s there target market! Did you try calling for a reservation and they declined you? How did you find out about the no reservation policy?

So in other words, a different restaurant. With different booking policies, different levels of staff training, different point of sales units, different levels of back of house staff, and a different menu. With a different level of staff that may have called in sick-how do you know that the staff who were just “hanging around” weren’t reception or portering staff, called in at the last minute because of the “short-staffing” issue?

So your not just pitting this hotel, but the policy in general? From both the customer and the restaurants point of view, it makes sense. A section can be turned around for dinner or breakfast service, meaning a lower wage cost for the restaurant, and lower/consistant prices for the customer. If you get a large group walk-in, they can all be seated together without having to worry about various smaller tables of customers being in the way. And those larger groups tend to be noisier, and smaller tables appreciate being seated seperately. Some people feel differently, but it is hard to set a policy for what (from my industry experience), is a minority opinion.

You’ve really laid down a poor foundation to back this up. Why is it madness, because it annoys you?

You seem to have a poor understanding of the logistics of running a buffet restaurant at a hotel. But that is really beside the point. As a customer, you have every right to spend your money at places where you see fit. You don’t like dining at restaurants with sectional policy, and chose to spend your money elsewhere-there is no problem with that.

The restaurant trade is a high risk, high pressure, high stress environment, and it takes the combined effort of the varying food runners, bartenders, dish-washers, sous-chefs, hosts, and waiters, to keep those pressures invisible to the customer. On some very bad days, sometimes cracks occur in the “illusion” that hospo staff try to create. It seems you struck this restaurant on one of these “bad days.” Going next door was the right thing for you to do: however you have done nothing to convince me that there is a problem with a sectional system, or that the restaurant should have opened the closed section just for you.