“I’m sorry, sir, but we don’t accept reservations.”

This phrase was uttered by more than one restaurant that I called while looking for somewhere to go for lunch with my co-workers, and it’s a phrase that baffles me whenever I hear it. When a group of ten people want to eat out at lunch, it’s not really practical to herd everyone to the restaurant in the hopes that there’s enough space for everyone.

Fortunately, the restaurant we ended up going to did have room, but only because some of us showed up around 11:30 to hold the tables until the rest of the group showed up. I quizzed the hostess at the restaurant about it, but the only insight she could offer was “it’s the policy”, which really doesn’t explain anything.

I don’t understand why a restaurant wouldn’t want to take reservations, especially during the holiday season. If people are more than 5 minutes late, cancel their reservation and let some of the people waiting in line for “45 to 50 minutes” be seated instead.

For the restaurant that we ended up going to for lunch this “policy” almost cost them a table of 9 or 10 people. If it wasn’t for the fact that we had a limited number of choices because we left things to the last minute, we would have gone somewhere else that did take reservations. The reason we didn’t go somewhere else is that they had too many reservations to fit us in.