For Four Short Hours, I become the most powerful woman in the world...

I am the hostess at a restaurant.

It’s a little restaurant located in downtown Brooklyn and for four hours on Thursday, Friday and Sunday, I become the most powerful woman in the world. You need a table – I’m the one you find. I find it astounding how my words can be set in stone when I speak to people. “The wait is forty minutes”, I would say and they’ll believe me! Ha!

There should be some rules set in place when it’s super busy and the wait is super long:

• Do not relocate yourself after you’ve been sat. I have a certain seating plan going on in my head to accommodate the other five parties after you on my waitlist, and doing this messes me up completely.
  
  
• Do not spend ten minutes deciding on whether or not you’ll stay and wait or go to another restaurant. I’m a busy girl and I will walk away.
  
  
• Please refrain from forcing your orders on me. Your waiter is going to tend to you soon.
• Do not leave coins. Sometimes I have to bus tables myself and it’s so annoying, because picking up coins can really slow a person down.
  
  
• Wait to be seated! If you go off and sit down, no one will know you’re there and you’ll feel like a fool waiting for service.
  
  
• After I have told you how long the wait is and written your name on my waitlist, please do not harass the waiters about how long it will take to be seated, they don’t know shit!
  
  
• Stop yourself if you’re calling to make a reservation ten minutes before you actually come in. If it’ll take at least thirty minutes till a table clears, your lil’ ten-minute-before phone call is not going to help you. Try a day in advance.
  
  
• Do not get upset with me if your waiting time is longer than expected. I can only seat you if people leave, so, if they’re not leaving then there’s nothing I can do, can I?

Have a Happy Wait. =]