Platinum Elite: Why Cheesecake Factory has systems

Last night, I met Ryan and Nate at Cheesecake Factory. Nate is momentarily in town between his globetrekking adventures, and ships off again Thursday.

I must say that Cheesecake Factory's usually organized incredibly long wait was an incredibly unorganized kind-of-short wait yesterday.

I arrived at 6:30 to put our name in for a table for 2 at 7:15. Ryan was coming for just a drink, while Nate stayed for dinner. I was told that my table was only 10-15 minutes away, but since my party was not going to be there at 6:45, they would not be able to seat me. So I asked to put my name in for 7:15, something they could not do because, well they "don't do that," and that I should check back about 20 minutes later. She was attempting to time the estimated longer wait at 6:50 with my desired 7:15 table. Sounds a bit complicated, especially for a patron who was going to be drinking at their bar during the interim.

Nonetheless, at 7pm, I checked in again to get on the list. 10-15 minutes. Perfect. I pointed to the corner where we were (the closest corner to the host's desk). Nate shows up around 7, we have a drink at the bar (Ryan and I had already been drinking there).

Now, they're not handing out the flashing vibrating gizmos, but simply screaming out names of people waiting in their atrium. Cheesecake Factory has high ceilings and is busy. It's loud. I know that we're going to miss our table, since we can't hear the screams in the loud bar area. Part of me wanted to see how it was going to go down (and to see if after showing up at 6:30 and being told to return, then returning around 7pm and pointing to where we were standing in their own bar, if we would be notified of our table), so I just let things take their courses, and predicted that in 10-15 minutes, they would not find us.

Well, of course they wouldn't. We weren't in a rush, so no big deal. Around 7:30, I checked in again. They said that our table had been called "a while ago," but that they would try to get us a table in a few minutes. Since we closed our tab, we then decided to wait in the atrium with all of the folks who haven't yet spent a dime there.

After another 10-15 minutes, we were seated around 7:45. Other tables for 2 were seated even after our final reminder to them. It seems to me that they should have been using the gizmos, or that they should have taken a couple of seconds to remember we were drinking at their bar 40 feet away, or that we should have had the next table right after checking in the final time.

I'm going to refute any arguments of "well, you should have been paying better attention," given our patronizing their bar, their inattentiveness, their lack of using the system that they had available, and the general volume and chaos in that place. Sure, if we were just waiting in their atrium and not paying attention, that's our fault. But, I think our bar tab gives us a Get Out of Jail Free card.