The problem with Denny's on Sunday and an inexperienced and panicking hostess

I went to Ballard today for to pick up my monthly supply of Mafia Cheese, which meant that Dragons wanted to come along for some Denny's action.

The Denny's in Ballard is the most convienient place for me to get ready-steady hashbrowns, the IHOP in the U-District notwithstanding because there's just no parking there and I'm just not gonna deal with that.

Today being Sunday, and it being almost noon, the place was hopping. We did get seated almost immediately though, as did five other groups in a previously empty section, and it soon became obvious that the hostess had freaked out about how many people were there and in her panic had seated us all in a section with no server available yet.

This meant two things:

1) Nobody came by to take as much as a drink order or bring place settings for a loooooooooong time
2) The other tables that were seated didn't necessarily grok the situation, so when the server finally came on and came around, he was getting yelled at on all sides, and there was a minute amount of panicking on his side as well.

Noting that one can normally get seated, order, eat hashbrowns and sip coffee, and pay in about 1/2 an hour, this is what actually happened:

12:00 Seated at a table with two menus and nothing else

12:21 We got placemats and placed our order

12:39 Coffee is brought — yes, almost 20 minutes after ordering. Note that I would normally be completely done and gone at this point.

By this time, most of the lunch people have gotten their checks and left, which means things start moving faster.

12:43 Silverware! Napkins!

12:44 Food! (well, most of it, anyway. they left the bacon and sausage off one order, we never got jelly for the toast and eventually got up and hunted it down ourselves)

12:59 Check, box, and leave.

Now I'm annoyed at that Denny's and it's all the seating girl's fault. I mean, they have a waiting area where you an sit and wait for a table if there are none available. And I think in general, people understand that if you're waiting for a table, you're waiting. But once you get a table, there's an expectation that you'll be served in a fairly short order. We actually waited for so long that I wondered why my food was taking so long and then realized that I hadn't even got to order yet.

That's how long it was.

Anyway, the hostess sucks. Server was great though, for all the stress the hostess's errors caused him.

And, I guess, in the end, I did get my hashbrowns, and it's not like I lost a leg or am dying of some crazy disease in some third world country, so it worked out okay. We'll see how it is next month, when I do my next Mafia Cheese pick-up.