A reservation for 6 arrives with 6 adults and three babies. “So it’s… 9 of you?” “No, hahaha. They’re babies. We’ll just need a few high chairs,”one tells you, laughing and looking at baby monster #1 as if they are sharing a little joke together. I notice the drool stream thickens slightly from the side of his mouth. Hell, maybe they are sharing a little joke together.
I look at their designated section of the communal farm table (farm-to-table farm table?) and struggle to keep my face completely calm and slightly merry as I realize that the “three high chairs” for these diminutive humans are going to completely capsize the delicate dance that was every single reservation we have from 11am-3pm. “We’ll just need three high chairs, 18 square feet of floor space, an unforgiving blockage of the restaurant’s main thoroughfares and thus the certainty that if there is a fire, we will all die inside the bacon-scented inferno, and also, do you have gluten and dairy free options? We might look like adults but we have the intestinal tolerance of babies and, well, no one at the moment to change our diapers.”
“Also, um, wait. Is there… do you have something… something else? This just… it isn’t very private.” You wait, with your composed, calm, slightly merry face while, expectedly, the semi-adult version of every frat boy who tried to sloppily fuck you in college shoots the coldest of stares in his wife’s direction who, you’re certain, does this all the time. The stare misfires and hits the baby. The baby starts screaming. The other babies start screaming. One throws up, or something. One of the other wives buries her head in her hands. Her husband comforts her slightly as they all look up, expectedly, waiting for the only couple allowed to speak because they drive the biggest SUV and she is wearing the biggest diamond. She huffs and pulls out a chair aggressively. “The high chairs??” she spits in your direction. And then says, “I don’t want to wait any longer for a drink. Um, are you guys…?” She briefly scans the faces of the group for confirmation that she neither needs nor wants. “Yes, ok. I’ll have a dirty Ketel One extra dry martini with two olives. Are you guys getting mimosas? You are. and 5 mimosas.” She sighs and smiles. I hand out the menus and catch my manager, behind the bar, aggressively shaking and stirring and mouthing, “What the FUCK?” In my direction. I walk swiftly yet calmly to the bar. “What the fuck was that? I need you back here!!”
“No one knows how to fucking sit anymore.”
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