DLBDS said:
Clearly, I'm in the minority on this topic. But let me ask you this....what do you do as you look around and see folks with food struggling to find somewhere to sit down and there's table after table occupied by folks such as yourself...with no food. Do you feel sorry for them? Ignore them? Do you just not care? Or do you feel guilty because you know that you're sitting at a table that they could be using to eat their lunch? Seriously. I couldn't help but wonder what all of those people were thinking as they watched folks walk around with their trays of food in search of a vacant table. If it were me, I would give it up. I just couldn't sit there and ignore them. Clearly, their need is greater than my comfort.
Count me in on the minority side!!!! Put yourself in my place. Im generally alone. I dont have anyone to save a table while I get the food. What am I supposed to do? How and where am I supposed to eat?
LIFERBABE said:
Im sorry, but I agree with stagemom. At a TS restaurant, you are seated while you wait for your food and no one makes you get up so someone else can dine.
Table service restaurants,
unlike counter/quick service locations do not admit more parties than they have tables available. Period. Its not a reasonable comparison.
As many others have posted, splitting a group up and having one person go order while another finds a table is an eminently sensible and efficient thing to do.
And equally eminently inconsiderate toward Guests without splittable parties.
We split up and I grab a seat with the kids while DH orders. The only people searching for seats that I would feel sorry for is if someone is there by themselves with a young child and they couldn't do the same thing.
So you wouldnt feel sorry for/be considerate of someone traveling by themselves without a young child?
LilGMom said:
We "save seats" at CS and will continue to do so. All four of us (ds-6, ds-2, dh & I) get in line to figure out what we want and when dh is about three from the front I take the youngest,
THAT is a perfectly sensible, reasonable compromise!!!! Good for you, and on behalf of ALL Guests unable to save a table while part of their party waits in line, I thank you sincerely!!!!!!!!!!!!
Talking Hands said:
Edited to add I don't ususally get the table until after we order. Might as well since the chair won't go in the lines there. So we are not waiting for 30 minutes but 5 to 10 at the most.
Thank you to you, as well!!!!
DLBDS said:
It's wrong for someone without food to occupy a table when someone with food needs it. Nuff said.
stagemomx3 said:
Perhaps for you personally it is wrong. I do not and never will believe that it is wrong.
Okay, how about not wrong but self-centered and inconsiderate?
You feel you are more entitled to that table because you paid for and received your food 5, 10, or 15 minutes before the party of the person holding the table purchased and received theirs?
Well, if it is fifteen minutes, the diner like the OP or myself could most likely be done eating and gone before your food even gets to the table
scrapbookworm said:
If a few family members holds a table while someone else does the ordering at the said CS eatery, I have no problem with that. We did that last week numerous times. It took 30 minutes to get pizza at MGM, and you can bet that DH, stepmom, and DD were waiting at the table while my dad and me got the food. The line outside the pizza place was horrible- how much worse would it have been if all those people PLUS the additional family members were there- all those people x3, minimum.
Well, the line might have been physically longer, but the actual time to order and get the food would still be thirty minutes. In the meantime, that solo Guest or the single parent with small child who finally got to the front of the line and paid for and got their food, now exits into a restaurant with NO available tables, about 1/3 of which are being saved by parties who havent even ordered yet.
oybolshi said:
Would I be willing to share if someone asked? Sure, although we usually only sit at tables for two.
Is there a reason, if youre at a table with empty seats, that you wouldnt
offer one/some to a Guest whos obviously wandering around with nowhere to place their tray of food?
kimberh said:
When it is the two of us, I have gladly shared our table at Ak and MGM, with another family,( I don't just set and stare at them, I invite them to join us)
goofy4tink said:
I have invited a solo person to join our table on occasion. It was very pleasant meeting someone new and they got to sit down and eat.
theparsons said:
So, I'm wondering...those of you who don't think a table should be saved....do you ever linger at the table for a few minutes after the last of the food is chewed and swallowed....you know finishing up the conversation you were having....maybe figuring out where you are going to go next?
Nope, not at all. I can talk to myself anywhere. What I
cant do is hold a table for myself and wait in line to order my food at the same time.
Conservative Hippie said:
I don't feel bad about it because everyone else in line has the option to do it, too.
Well, no. As you can see from some of the responses here, NOT everyone in line has that same option.
disneyfav4ever said:
Also, as a usually solo traveler, and therefore not able to save seats, I've rarely had a problem finding a table.
I have. I have returned food because after fifteen or twenty minutes of trying to find a table, only to have others who move faster than me (without food) swoop in to save a table for their party that just got in line, I have brought my tray back to the cashier and explained why I want my money back by then, my previously-hot food is no longer edible.
I think this argument is hilarious, but that being said- what do you do when you get fastpasses? The CMs want one person to take all the park tickets to the fastpass machines and then doll out the fastapsses accordingly so there isn't a big mass of people at the fastpass machines. We do the same at CS restaurants-
Not a reasonable comparison in the least. Even if it were to take five minutes to get TO the FastPass machine and get all your admission media through and FPs generated, thats it. Once they print, youre done. Not so in a restaurant. Say the line is twenty minutes long. The table-savers are holding tables for twenty minutes, then using them as dining surfaces for twenty or thirty minutes. Meanwhile, a Guest who exited the line with their tray at the same time a table-saving partys orderer got in line, and who would likely be done eating in the time it takes that person to get the food, cant find a place to sit.
