Friends and my wife and I were to meet last night at a locally owned, single location favorite of this board. They arrived early, and apparently the host/hostess attempted to seat them at a table that was in the very back of the restaurant, next to the kitchen door, despite us having made reservations about ten days earlier. My friends declined the table, and asked to wait in the lobby while an additional table opened. Full disclosure, I was not there to hear any of the discussion about the table.
We arrived, and our friends were in the small waiting area. They explained the situation and we were fine with it. About two minutes after our arrival, a man came forth and began berating our friends, telling them that if we decided to stay, he wanted our assurance we weren't going to abuse our server! He then wanted to know if a better table would be "good enough to impress your friends." He then began to give my friends a lesson in courtesy - except his rudeness in doing so was stunning. He subsequently told us that he was "the manager," as if that gave him some license to act like an ass. My friends are both professionals and in the twenty years I've known them have ever demonstrated rudeness to wait staff or management - quite to the contrary.
Well, done. No do-overs in a case like this. Life is too short and there are too many options in this community to go back to a place where management is allowed to deal with customers in that way.
And, it apparently was a bad enough scene that our server insisted on comping dessert because of the "situation" that had taken place earlier.
Oh, by the way Mr. Manager, despite your crappy behavior, I did tip our server 25%.
