Patty is home, and it's been super New York-y already: the other people in Terminal 8 were so excited to see their loved-ones they were blocking folks from getting out; the cab said his credit card thing was broken; the sound of the heating pipes woke us up; and there was some seriously creepy bird action this morning. Thumbs up.
On splitting the check. I understand the complaint. I don't understand why it's necessary. I've almost NEVER run into this, though. We all figure out what we owe, chuck it in, and since I've been over the age of about 25, we've usually had too much money, not too little.
Re: splitting the check, most of my customers (in larger groups, at least) seem split fairly evenly. About a 1/3 of them ask specifically for separate checks, another 1/3 simply do the math themselves and pay for whatever they owe (or, in some cases, the people who didn't eat much pay for theirs and then everyone else splits the rest of the total evenly), and the last 1/3 just split everything evenly. From time to time, the last one does spark some arguments at the table if someone feels like they're having to pay too much for what they ate/drank.
Most restaurant computer systems can handle splitting the check easily without much trouble, as long as the customers tell us in advance if it's a large group (more than 8 or so) that wants to do it. The big problem is that, with most computer systems used in restaurants, everything has to be rung in on one ticket for the kitchen's sake. Everything's then separated off individually.
It's typically done by seat number, and the server has to be very careful to make sure that everything is put in under the correct seat number - which is extremely difficult when the customers are switching seats, meaning we have to keep track of it on paper in order to manually fix any wrong seat numbers at the end. And, if we're busy, sometimes we tend to not keep quite as good tabs on whether or not the person originally in seat #2 moved to seat #6 after ordering drinks but before ordering food. If the customers wait until the very end of the meal to let us know that, by the way, they want separate checks, it can be very time consuming for the server (especially if it's during a rush) to try separating them and make sure everything's 100% correct.
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Date: 2010-12-16 01:34 am (UTC)Most restaurant computer systems can handle splitting the check easily without much trouble, as long as the customers tell us in advance if it's a large group (more than 8 or so) that wants to do it. The big problem is that, with most computer systems used in restaurants, everything has to be rung in on one ticket for the kitchen's sake. Everything's then separated off individually.
It's typically done by seat number, and the server has to be very careful to make sure that everything is put in under the correct seat number - which is extremely difficult when the customers are switching seats, meaning we have to keep track of it on paper in order to manually fix any wrong seat numbers at the end. And, if we're busy, sometimes we tend to not keep quite as good tabs on whether or not the person originally in seat #2 moved to seat #6 after ordering drinks but before ordering food. If the customers wait until the very end of the meal to let us know that, by the way, they want separate checks, it can be very time consuming for the server (especially if it's during a rush) to try separating them and make sure everything's 100% correct.