The restaurant said that they were going to seat us in a table where there was currently a party of 16 so we would need to wait until they were done. At one point we went in and asked and they said "That party is paying now" and it was still another 20 minutes. They took their sweet time, and the restaurant did not seem to have any interest in, say, trying to combine several smaller tables to accomodate a big party. It just baffles me--if there are that many of us, they should be trying to court our business by being nice to us, not jerking us around. I wonder if it had anything to do with our age--all of us are in the 22-25 age range. Maybe they assumed we would be bad tippers or something. But damn, that was uncalled for.
We finally got a table at, oh, eight-fifteen or eight-thirty. Once we were seated, we didn't have any problems to speak of -- the waiter got our checks mixed up some but that was understandable with 18 of us, and he was excellent and professional the whole time.
I swear that wherever I go the hostesses are either snotty or inconsiderate--and it sure wasn't anything I did, I wasn't even the one talking to them.
This isn't normal, is it? 2 hours for a table, even if it was Friday before V-Day?