The Great Question of Where and How to Sit

I’ve learnt a great many things working in hospitality:

·      For many people the menu is a confusing, upsetting and at times life-or-death document that must be perused at great length and with much brow furrowing.

·      Although people will agonize over the menu, they will likely have forgotten what they ordered when their food is brought to the table.

·      Water is a delicacy and must be consumed in great quantities lest dehydration kicks in while dining. Waving the bottle in the air when it is empty is the universal sign for ‘more water’: the waiter must rapidly resolve this gesture.

·      If in doubt, order some sort of salad with grilled chicken or a burger. Lightly fried calamari is also a perfectly safe option.

·      Eye contact with your waiter and saying ‘thanks’ or ‘thank you’ are both entirely optional.

·      The appropriate response to ‘hello, how are you?’ is ‘two’—as in a truncated ‘we need a table for two.’

·      Allergies are the new thing.

·      Everyone’s coffee order must be different.

·      For some, being asked if they would like something (like a drink or food, as per a restaurant’s usual calling) is actually an intrusion by the waiter. Fixing the waiter with a confused stare and silence is the usual means of addressing their apparent rudeness or daring to interupt.

·      When a table is asked, ‘are you guys ready to order?’ and someone says ‘yes,’ they’re usually lying. No one is ever really ready to order. Its probably an existential thing.

·      A lot of people are sooking and stupid dickbags. This needs no further embellishment; I think it is pretty self-explanatory; it just goes with the business really.

However, when I was working the other night, what really struck me (again) is how complicated people make the simple art of sitting down. I say ‘art’ because the act itself becomes this strange performance or dance that is its own mini-narrative revolving around the two ostensibly simple questions: ‘where to sit and how far out should my chair be from the table?’ This most basic of physical tasks—to place your bum on a seat—has proven time and again to be a colossal challenge for many people visiting my restaurant that also reveals a great deal about their personality or even sense of entitlement.

The first challenge of the waiter is taking a group over to a table and having to stand there while they sort out the arrangement of who is sitting where. Who is getting the comfortable booth? Who is sitting closest to the next table over? How can we orientate ourselves around the table so we achieve the best balance of feng shui? How can we ensure that our internal energies are flowing freely between one another? If I sit here will I still be the same temperature the whole time? Will I be able to hear you if I sit diagonally across from you? Am I vulnerable to velociraptor attacks if I sit here? Will geopolitics be unsettled if I sit here? Will my geography be happy? (that last one is abstract, but so are most of the people I have to deal with)

After these various issues have been accounted for and the table has sat down, usually with at least two or three shuffles to maintain the right equilibrium, the next issue that faces the sitter is how far out they should sit from the table. Fortunately, in this case, most are happy to be closer to their food and don’t clog the vital lanes I have to navigate as a waiter (of course, some people are just fat and can't help where they sit in relation to their distance from the table). Yet, there are also some who seem to believe that they are entitled to all the space around them and are quite happy to lean back in their chairs and make it really difficult for anyone, customers and waiters, to get around them. 

These people seem to believe in their table as real estate, they want what they perceive to be the best and biggest, the chair is just a further extension to prove their apparent worth. Appropriately they tend to sprawl (as in urban sprawl and taking up physical space sprawling ... get it?) It is an enlightening view into their toxic personality. They need to be worked around. Why should they be of any assistance? They’ve assumed the right to their space now; it is no longer the restaurants while they are there. They cower over their table and chair like Gollum and the one ring: their precious.

Basically, if this wasn’t already clear, I’m impatient with people’s strange idiocies when it comes to something as simple as dining out. But it isn’t a particularly difficult thing to do. I don’t really think that one should need a manual, it’s really pretty instinctive: you sit, you order, you eat, you drink, you enjoy. If sitting is such a cause of anxiety, I firstly don’t think you should sit anymore, and secondly particularly don’t think you should subject yourself to the stresses of sitting in a restaurant where the choices may overwhelm you.

As for the jerks that stake their claims like some sort of middle class overweight gold prospector, well, I am a big guy and room is already hard to come by when I take up so much of it, so allow me my whine. Dicks.