When the universe gives you a sign

It wasn’t busy yet, but I believe that was exactly the point. I recognized her immediately, and I recognized what she was going to do too.

In the bar business, people often think they are more anonymous than they actually are. I have asked people to leave permanently at midnight one night, only to see them less than 24 hours later. The woman who kicked out the front window in the nightclub I worked at was back the very next week.

I don’t get it, but then again, I don’t get a lot of things. But I knew this woman’s modus operandi. She asked for three glasses of water and then spread them out over four seats. Our bar has 12 seats, so that represented one-third of our seating. Bars are busy when they are busy. There is an old saying about fishing that goes, “Fish when the fish are biting,” and that statement is also true of the service business. We are busy every night from 7 to 8:30 p.m. We have to make the bulk of our money in that short window. And we make money by having people in the seats.

There was no demand for those seats right at that moment. But it was also 6:45 p.m., so in a short period of time there would be.

Once I went to a comedy club and arrived early. I walked up to the bar to order a drink and was told that I was on the wrong side of the velvet rope. I hadn’t really even noticed it, as I was the only patron in the empty bar.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know.”

I looked at the bartender, and he looked at me.

“Do you want me to move?” I asked.

He nodded.

So, I walked the 15 or so feet around the rope to stand literally 16 inches from where I had been standing previously.

He could have easily just told me to “next time please be on the other side,” but he didn’t; instead he made me walk all the way around. And I was the only person there. Restaurateur Daniel Meyer said in “Setting the Table,” his New York Times bestselling book, “Be an agent, not a gatekeeper,” and while I disagree with him on a great many things, I agree with him on that. Service people, especially bar service people, are there to help, not hassle. We aren’t the fun police. But sometimes we are the business police. When what you are doing is affecting how the business is making money, then we have no choice but to step in.

“Are you saving these seats?” I asked the woman.

“Yes,” she said.

“We don’t allow the saving of seats for people who are not here, especially when we have people standing and waiting,” I said.

“I’ve done it before,” she said.

“I am sorry about that,” I said.

“But we even have a sign saying exactly that,” I added, pointing at the sign.

She didn’t know what to say. But she was clearly agitated. She took three or four pictures of the sign and kept looking up at it every few minutes.

“If your friends aren’t here in five minutes, I will have to let these other people here sit there,” I said.

“They are parking right now,” she said, clearly lying.

“Five minutes,” I said.

Once I witnessed a man at a drugstore freak out because they had locked up the razor blades. I mean, he went ballistic, wildly out of proportion with the inconvenience of getting a clerk to unlock them. When he left, I mentioned that to the clerk. What that clerk said has stuck with me to this day.

“We did that because of him specifically. He has been the one stealing them,” he said.

Over my years in the service business, I have seen that exemplified in other areas. Without a doubt the person causing the biggest scene is the person who just got caught cheating, stealing or rigging the system. It never fails.

Eight minutes later, I made her give up the seats. Twenty minutes later, her friends arrived. And in those 20 minutes, I sold two martinis, a bottle of wine, two appetizers and an entree to the couple who had sat down. That’s about $200 for the house and about $30 to $40 for me. That is not insignificant.

“My friends are here,” she said, as if I was supposed to ask those other people to leave.

I didn’t, and her three friends ordered a split glass of chardonnay and a hot water. And that’s it.

Later, she pointed at the sign and said, “I can’t believe you put up a sign like that.”

Leaving me with these thoughts:

• We put up that sign specifically because of her.

• “I’ve made much more money by choosing the right things to say ‘no’ to than by choosing things to say ‘yes’ to,” Meyer also said.

• You have to be a special sort of awful for a business to create a policy specific to your behavior.

• If the universe gives you a sign, and it’s a real literal printed sign hanging on a wall, maybe you should listen.