Heat and Thunder

"Hey can you help me set up a fourteen top outside?" Ken, one of the waiters, asked me.

"Its fucking a hundred degrees out!" I exclaimed.

"I know, but they want to sit outside." He said.

"Do they have a reservation?" I asked.

Ken shook his head.

Go figure. Walk in groups like this mean nothing but trouble. Anyone with half an ounce of common sense would call any group over four in which means they are usually classless people from the sticks who want just drinks, appetizers and orders from the kids menu.

Now ordering as much as possible for as little as possible is just fine for a sports bar or something, but this is a nice restaurant we're talking about here. So naturally the group followed this par course that I laid out. But that's an entirely different issue.

The issue was the heat, and the dark thunder heads on the horizon.

"Ken, tell them no, its too damn hot and its going to storm in about fifteen minutes." I stated.

"Its cool dude, they want to sit out here." Ken retorted.

Well I might want to stand on the corner of Crensaw in South Central wearing nothing but a Klan hood and a jockstrap holding a sign that states "Down With The Darkies" but it doesn't mean its a good idea, now does it.

"I'll have nothing to do with it." I said walking off.

I took a look at the group as I went inside. Yup, at least one person wearing mu mu and another with a wife beater on were present.

I can just hear the first thing out of wife beater's mouth, "Ya'll got Boooooosh light?"

So they were seated outside in the sweltering heat and humidity, damn sadists. Of course it'll be Ken sweating the most, not them.

Ken wandered in after taking their drink order and I asked him, "What did they order?"

I kept my fingers crossed for the answer I was looking for...

Busch Light

Ken shot me a dirty look, "They wanted Keeeers Light."

Damn, pretty close though.

So about fifteen minutes passed and the gale hit like a God-Damn magic show.

The whole group came running inside as their Coors Lights and onion rings were pelted with rain and debris.

By this point in time the restaurant has started to fill up and there was almost nowhere to put such a group.

So the host and managers run around and throw a table together for them, right in the middle of two other servers' sections.

Well, naturally they weren't very happy as four of their collective tables were bastardized.

Tables=Money

So the servers pretty much stood around for two hours doing nothing as the fourteen top camped out, they missed out on a couple of reservations and probably a couple more dollars.

So that's what happens when we as an industry refuse to say no, somewhere some restaurant manager gave an inch and we've been on a retreat matched only by Napoleon in Russia ever since.

Maybe I just have a morsel of sense, but who in the hell would want to sit outside on a day like that?

When the party was waiting for their inside table I did overhear a woman say this to one of the managers, "Well if we had known it was going to rain we would have sat inside."

What a prodigy, I realize you don't have Doppler radar attached to the hump on your back...

But had she ever considered this...

Looking at the sky!?