Call Ahead. Please.

I went to a favorite local restaurant with some friends tonight. I was in stellar company and the food was eventually awesome, but the service? Oy.

Our hostess? Was bad. The waiting area at this place is itty bitty. And tonight it was jammed with hungry people. I knew there was a problem when, upon my arrival in said itsy waiting area, I was met by a person in my dinner party who confirmed that not only did we not have a reservation, which meant we would have A Wait, but that we had to get on a waiting list in order to wait for a table. Are you with me here? Because this meant we were waiting to wait.

And so? We waited.

And waited and waited. Occasionally, smart people with RESERVATIONS would come in and get seated. But mostly? We waited with these same, oh, about 10 or 12 people or so jammed into this little waiting area. The hostess, mysteriously, would disappear regularly for ten minute stretches. Then she would return to the tiny, jam-packed waiting area in order to to scream at us, the poor bastards who had been waiting for approximately an eternity, at point-blank range,

"DO YOU HAS WESERVATION?"

You know? We didn't has weservation, because probably if we did, we wouldn't have been standing here for an hour. We began to discuss, among ourselves, the 10 or 12 of us or so (because by this time we'd exchanged e-mail addresses and cell numbers and two of our number had fallen in love and were attempting to conceive a child in the corner) that maybe we could somehow, belatedly, get weservation. The hostess obviously seemed to keep expecting us to suddenly has weservation.

We hatched a plan. We would sneak over behind the hostess station while the hostess was on one of her many mysterious forays to points unknown and secretly write our name on weservation list. MWA HA! After a thorough investigation of all the nooks and crannies of the station, however, we learned the wiley hostess had taken the list with her. Damnit!

"DO YOU HAS WESERVATION?"

You know? We still didn't has one. Not a single one of us. Damn the bad luck. But we were getting curious about where the hostess was disappearing to on such a regular basis between weservation interrogatories. It was suggested that maybe she was actually in a workshop out back constructing the tables at which we would (in theory) some day be seated.

At nearly two hours we got brazen and began spilling out into the dining area. Maybe we could intimidate a group of diners into giving up their table with our desperate, angry, exasperated, hollow-cheeked stares.

Just then, two fresh people from the outside world wedged themselves into the waiting area. The hostess returned.

"DO YOU HAS WESERVATION?"

One of the new waiters whispered something to the hostess. The hostess whispered back (and who could have guessed Drill Seargent Hostess was even capable of whispering?)

And then they got seated. Just like that! Shazam! And, ya'll? We knew those new people most certainly did not has weservation. Because we would've smelled it on 'em.

To be continued...