Let's play musical rooms.....

I was scheduled to work a memorial luncheon yesterday, so my fellow server, with whom I was working, and I decided to arrive a little early to make sure everything was set up for success. We crossed every “t” and dotted every “I”. We wanted to be sure that this would go as smoothly as it could possible go. The tables were set, creamers and butter were out, the water was poured, carafes of water were on each table, the coffee was ready, as were the thermal coffee pots we could set on the tables, the buffet was ready, the bread baskets were ready, our wait station was stocked to the max with ice, iced tea, lemonade, soft drinks, glasses, you name it, we had it ready…for 30 to 40 people.


At the last minute we get a call that there will be 50 to 60 people. That’s cool. The room right next to it was pretty much set up also, so we figure we can put the overflow in there. We figured wrong. They started complaining that they all wall wanted to be in one room. That would have been entirely possible if we had known ahead of time how many people there was going to be.

If you’ve never worked in a restaurant, then you have no idea the amount of prep work that goes into setting up a group event. And, because you don’t know, you don’t care.

As I’m walking back from the bar with a couple of drinks, I’m met by an onslaught of people moving to the main dining room. Great! I knew what table these drinks went to, when they were seated in the room we had prepared, now I have no idea where these people are.

Did I mention that the chafing dishes already had hot pans of food in them? Not easy to move chafing dishes with hot food in the top pan and steaming water in the bottom pan.

An hour and a half of prep time, was all for nothing.