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Angry over too many customers

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Here’s one I really need help understanding. I just attended my class reunion, which was held on a Friday night at a restaurant with a huge patio. There were about 100 of us in attendance. To say it did not go smoothly would be an understatement.

I was not on the reunion committee that made the weekend plans, but from what I was told, arrangements were made with the g.m. of the restaurant. Space was to be set aside for our group on the patio and in a screened-in area off the patio. Apparently, the g.m. left the restaurant to take a job elsewhere, but never informed his replacement about the agreement. So, when we arrived, the restaurant was caught totally off guard. The staff was not only unhappy, they were rude.  

Imagine it’s a Friday night, when just about any restaurant worth its salt does good business.

All of a sudden, 100 people show up at 6 p.m. Our gathering was never intended to be a sit-down affair, and there was no food pre-ordered. We were there for drinks and could order food off the regular menu if we wished. But the place was a madhouse. There was little or no room to sit and nearly every foot of space in the restaurant and on the patio was filled with people.

I wondered why the restaurant would ever agree to this arrangement in the first place. On a slow night it makes sense. On a Friday night, at least this Friday night, it did not. A few days after the event I asked a server at the restaurant for her take on the matter. She explained that nobody on the reunion committee had confirmed the reunion get-together for that night. In any case, one or more people screwed up, and tempers flared. Servers and food runners were particularly irked because all the traffic lanes were blocked with people standing anywhere they could.

When I first arrived I spotted the new g.m. standing in the corner watching this spectacle unfold. His expression was a mix of anger and disbelief. And he was angry. He began to circulate around the crowd curtly asking who was in charge of the reunion gathering. And he repeatedly and sternly asked customers to stop blocking the aisles and serving stations in the restaurant. Keep in mind that not everybody in the restaurant and on the patio was part of our group. So we and regular customers were being repeatedly reprimanded for, well, being good customers.The people in my group are not teetotallers. A lot of money was spent and the restaurant had a banner night, financially, at least.

This is an impossible situation, I know. But how would you have handled a similar flood of unexpected customers? The g.m at this restaurant apparently saw it as a no-win situation and acted as such. But at least 35 people in our group still live in town and are customers of the restaurant. Most left angry. Was kindness and understanding enough to save the day? Email me your thoughts.

Michael Sanson, editor-in-chief
e-mail: [email protected]
Twitter: @MikeSansonRH

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