we ordered place for 3.
4th person showed up. We Asked to switch tables cuz we had the washing station blocking a 4th seat- there were several open tables.
Waiter was nice about it but said it's policy not to switch us.
Manager came over and made us feel like criminals.
We said were leaving.
D. got manager to change his mind as we were on our way out.
Manager gave the waiter over the head about it.
Food was not bad, but customer service plays a big role in people's feelings to a place.
The end.
Spot on summary, but wanted to add a bit of color:
I was the first to arrive and asked for a table large enough for 3, assuming they'd give us a 4-top, or at least a 2-top which we could expand laterally to when someone else came. At the time there were about 20 empty seats across multiple tables. The host said that the policy wasn't to seat until the entire party arrives, but after I asked nicely to try to figure something out a few times, he said if we waited a few minutes he would make an exception and seat us at their 3-top (sort of an awkward layout with a column taking up a quarter of the table but we were ok with it). I was satisfied with this because we were only expecting 3 (Dr. Moose said he would be joining about 30 mins in).
In a cool happening, EJB surprised us by shooting up the 2-3 line and popped in, and actually made it before Dr. M.
When the good Dr. arrived is when the rest of the story occurred. After getting verbally abused were all prepared to take our food to go and decamp to try and squeeze around my tiny apartment's table when I decided to HUCA so to speak with the manager. The case I made was math: If EJB and Dr. M sat at a 2-top, and Lou and I stayed at the 3, he would be missing out on a possible seat to fill, whereas if we could move to the 4-person he could seat 3 at the table we were leaving.
