T ravelers eventually have to eat; and the usual choice — other than those which include but are not limited to room service; preparing your own meal in the hotel room; or food which is taken out or taken away — is to dine at a restaurant…
…but depending on where you travel, customs at restaurants could be different than those of where you are based — and that could include when a restaurant is most crowded.
I just returned from dining out at a restaurant; but I arrived during the busiest time on a Saturday night — and there was a crowd of hungry patrons awaiting their turn to be escorted to a table and enjoy a hearty dinner.
“The wait is about 30 minutes,” the maître d’ advised.
Options include leaving to find another place to dine; or wait around until a table is ready. As 30 minutes is not all that long of a wait, I decided to stay.
Review a Menu While Waiting For Your Table
“May I have a menu in the meantime?” I asked.
“Of course,” responded the the maître d’, who then handed a menu to me.
After reviewing the menu at my leisure and deciding what I want, I gave back the menu and looked around at all of the other people who were waiting. Not one of them was reviewing a menu. Instead, some of them were chatting with each other; some were entranced by whatever was going on with their portable electronic devices while unaware as to what was going on around them; and some of them sat quietly and patiently to be called to their table.
Not long after I was finished perusing the menu, it was my turn to be escorted to a table; and when the waitress arrived, I informed her that I did not need a menu, as I already knew what I wanted to order. She smiled and happily wrote down my order, as this apparently saved her an extra trip to my table and allowed her more time to service the other tables. Meanwhile, I saved myself some time because if I was not yet ready to place my order, I would not know when she would be able to return to my table.
Summary
Time is valuable and precious. It is the one commodity which once it has passed, it can never return and be used again. I believe that we should all be able to choose as often as possible how we want to pass our time — and in order to do that, we must attempt to take as much control of how time affects us as often as possible.
You cannot do much with regard to waiting for a table at a crowded restaurant; but you can use the time to your advantage and do something which you would eventually need to do anyway: peruse a menu to decide what you want to eat…
…which seems so obviously simple that I never would have thought to offer it as advice — until my observation at a restaurant earlier tonight — and yes, I did leave the restaurant earlier that I would have had I not looked at the menu. This could potentially mean serving more customers sooner at the restaurant — similar, I suppose, to turning around airplanes at gates at airports for airlines to be able to offer faster service and squeeze in a few more flights during the schedule of a typical day…
Photograph ©2015 by Brian Cohen.
