Just wondering how to seting works at a large diner. If your sections doesnt have enough seats open then what?

Question

We own a 150 seat diner with 5 servers on. If the next person that is up only has room for a 4 and a 10 walks in how do we go about seating? Do we skip that server or move their section? When we get busy the servers get frusterated because A) they are not getting big tables and B) their sections are being movved around. It makes us frusterated being the hostesses because we are not sure how to handle that. Any insight would be a huge help and prevent alot of tears!

Answer 1

first please tell me you are not crying over the servers. YOU WILL NEVER MAKE SERVERS HAPPY! I am a hostess and a server and I know both sides. The only thing you can do is skip that server and seat them when th next available table comes in. if they have a problem with it give them as much sass as they give you. Ask them how would you seat 10 people in a 4 top. and then just look at them. Just stare at them until they feel just stupid. then walk off like nothing happened.

Answer 2

Skip their section.  If my section was moved when I'm busy I would probably get confused/forget about the section change, and then have irritated customers because they weren't being served.  A small change is okay (for example if there are two tables next to each other and one is in my section, and another is in a different server's section and you put them together, I would know that it's a big top coming in and one of us is getting the table).