My friend and I went to Bombay Garden in San Mateo for their buffet lunch today, and were met at the door by a large group of 12+ people. We were suprised that the place was sooo popular, but since we were really craving Indian food, I went in to go talk to the guy at the counter to see if people were putting their names down on a list, and to see how long the wait would be.”No list,” he said. “It will be about ten minutes for two.” Satisfied, I went back outside and waited patiently to be called over. We saw a bunch of open tables, so we figured they were just in the process of seating the large group.
Five minutes later, a couple walks up to me and is expressing surprise at the line outside the door. “Is there a list?” the girl asks me. I tell her no, and that I talked to the guy at the counter, and he said it would only be a ten minute wait. We’d been there for five minutes, I said, and it looks like they’re finally starting to seat parts of the large group.
She walks inside, talks to the same guy at the counter. This time, the guy looks at one of the empty tables, and points her over to one of them. The two of them walk over without a second thought.
I notice this, and I immediately go up to the host and ask why they were seated first when there were so many people ahead of them, including the rest of the large group, who had been waiting for close to 20 minutes. He points me to an empty table, but I ask him why the rest of the group still hasn’t been seated. He goes ahead and seats the group, then seats my friend and me.
There are several things wrong with this series of events:
1. That there was no list. It’s fairly standard for most places that once there are people waiting outside a restaurant, a list is kept of names and party member counts so that the host can organize seating and make sure people are seated based on availability and arrival times. The host did neither of these.
2. That the line-jumping happened. The host knew there others in line ahead of these two, including another party of two. Yet he pointed them to their seats as soon as they asked, even though he had told me to wait.
3. That line-jumping almost happened twice. Once I raised the issue with the host, he pointed me to my seat, even though there was still a group in front of me waiting, and there were tables available for them. It took me saying something before this group was seated.
4. That the girl didn’t say anything. The girl spoke to me maybe 30 seconds earlier, yet when the host seated the two of them first, she said nothing, even though she knew full well that there was another party of two in front of them. In her defense, she might have thought that I hadn’t talked to the host and that it was my mistake for idiotically standing in line without telling the host. But that doesn’t mean she couldn’t have done something to improve the situation.
Honestly, it’s not a huge deal that this happened — it’s a minor injustice, if you want to call it an injustice at all. I know people tend to act in their own best interests most of the time. But this would have been a miniscule thing to concede. It doesn’t require much effort to speak up to make sure that people are being treated fairly, even in something as trivial as a lunch line.