The Self Seaters

I had four sets of "self seaters" today, literally all within three minutes of each other.   I could feel their fiery eyes burning the back of my neck, helplessly and furiously wondering why I hadn't greeted them yet.  But what they don't realize is that because they are not following the correct order of how the restaurant seating process works, it throws off the entire flow of the server's section; therefore, making service inevitably slower. 

There were many groups of self seaters today.   In the F & B industry this term refers to people who like to seat themselves wherever and whenever they want in the restaurant, with no regard to checking in with the greeter or host (or anyone for that matter) and sometimes with no regard to a whether the table is even clean.  This is the worst case scenario because not only do we have to rush someone over to clean it (and apologize for the mess, which is ridiculous in itself because we never told them to sit there in the first place), we have to set the table and find them menus, all while they are sitting awkwardly and staring uncomfortably, seeking help.  This process can sometimes take upwards of 5-10 minutes, depending on how long it takes us to see the new table and how long it takes a server to get there.  Now on a busy day, this can take even longer.  What is even more frustrating though, is when guests are irritated that no one has greeted them yet.  I've had my moments when I've wanted to scream, "It's because YOU sat YOURSELF and no one said you were allowed to sit there!  There's order and rules in restaurants just like society for a reason.. to prevent chaos!  And YOU are a chaos instigator!"  God I wish we could just saw whatever we wanted sometimes.  Wouldn't that be liberating.

Interesting to note that self seaters also tend to be more high maintenance.  So automatically, us servers just grunt to ourselves as we see it happening.  Think about it.  If a guest is already chooses to sit wherever they want, with no regard to the seating process, what else are they going to ask for?  Probably something that's not even on the menu, a specialty cocktail of some kind, and of course,  they're going to want it right away...

... Bleh ...