A peculiar restaurant experience
After watching the eclipse yesterday, ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shalmestere and I and the five friends in our watch party stopped at a restaurant for an early dinner to (hopefully) wait out the worst of the traffic. [Complications of finding a restaurant elided.] We ended up at a table for four, with the other three sitting at the bar a few feet away.
It was resort-town pub grub, not a lot of variety on the menu, but some things that looked potentially good. I ordered "bang bang shrimp", and the other three people at my table ordered a fancy hamburger, one of them "no bun" to avoid gluten. A reasonable time later, a waitperson brought my shrimp and a hamburger, then went back to the kitchen and brought the other two hamburgers, then went back to the kitchen and brought two lemonades, then went back to the kitchen and brought two Cokes, then went back to the kitchen and brought me some silverware and a napkin. No silverware or napkins for the other three people.
I guess I could imagine thinking a hamburger doesn't require silverware (although they were fairly large and thick, and came with French fries that arguably required silverware too, at least at a place with real silverware and cloth napkins), but the customer with the bunless hamburger certainly needed it, and everybody needs napkins. So we pointed out that other people still needed silverware and napkins, and the waitperson went back to the kitchen and brought another set of silverware and a napkin. We asked for silverware and napkins for the other two people too, and the waitperson went back to the kitchen and got those. I almost felt bad asking again for the "water all around" that I had requested at the same time as our drinks orders, and didn't make an issue of it when only two waters arrived. They were clearly short-staffed, and apparently had no serving trays at all, hence all the deliveries of exactly two handfuls of stuff at a time, but really -- under what scenario does it make sense to provide napkins and silverware to fewer than all the customers? This only means you need to make more trips, which exacerbates the short-staffed-ness problem.
shalmestere and I and the five friends in our watch party stopped at a restaurant for an early dinner to (hopefully) wait out the worst of the traffic. [Complications of finding a restaurant elided.] We ended up at a table for four, with the other three sitting at the bar a few feet away.It was resort-town pub grub, not a lot of variety on the menu, but some things that looked potentially good. I ordered "bang bang shrimp", and the other three people at my table ordered a fancy hamburger, one of them "no bun" to avoid gluten. A reasonable time later, a waitperson brought my shrimp and a hamburger, then went back to the kitchen and brought the other two hamburgers, then went back to the kitchen and brought two lemonades, then went back to the kitchen and brought two Cokes, then went back to the kitchen and brought me some silverware and a napkin. No silverware or napkins for the other three people.
I guess I could imagine thinking a hamburger doesn't require silverware (although they were fairly large and thick, and came with French fries that arguably required silverware too, at least at a place with real silverware and cloth napkins), but the customer with the bunless hamburger certainly needed it, and everybody needs napkins. So we pointed out that other people still needed silverware and napkins, and the waitperson went back to the kitchen and brought another set of silverware and a napkin. We asked for silverware and napkins for the other two people too, and the waitperson went back to the kitchen and got those. I almost felt bad asking again for the "water all around" that I had requested at the same time as our drinks orders, and didn't make an issue of it when only two waters arrived. They were clearly short-staffed, and apparently had no serving trays at all, hence all the deliveries of exactly two handfuls of stuff at a time, but really -- under what scenario does it make sense to provide napkins and silverware to fewer than all the customers? This only means you need to make more trips, which exacerbates the short-staffed-ness problem.