Rude Things People Do - Blog One: Staying Past Closing

There are so many rude things people do without realizing it that I will be devoting several blogs over the next few weeks to them.
To start, one of the rudest thing customers can do when eating out at a restaurant is to stay past close. Restaurants have a closing time for a reason - the kitchen takes over an hour to close for the night and servers have to close the front of the restaurant as well. If customers sit past closing time, there are many different people who get stuck waiting on them to leave. One couple can literally keep five extra staff members there until they finally leave.
Now I am not saying that if a restaurant closes at eleven you must be out by then. That is the last time they are willing to seat people so the kitchen is still open and servers are expecting to get sat. However, if you do come in close to that time, you should order promptly, eat at a reasonable pace, and not sit around chatting afterwards. There are plenty of bars and cafes open late so if you want to catch up with your friend for awhile after dinner - hop over to one of those. The staff there is prepared to stay late. Also, if you do end up staying at a restaurant for awhile after close, you should know that your server is most likely still there solely because of you. So please keep that in mind when you tip them. Even if your bill was only $20, it would be polite to leave them close to $10 because you kept them an extra hour while they are only getting $2.13 to stay there.
You would think people staying long after close wouldn't be a big deal, but it is. Thursday night I ended up staying at Outback until 12:30 (we close at 11) waiting on three ladies who sat and chatted for over an hour and a half. They actually sat down around 10 so there was absolutely no reason for them to stay for that length of time. All of my side work (which will be discussed in a later blog) was finished and my tables were swept so as soon as they left I could clean their table and leave too. They had to notice the other servers cleaning their tables and sweeping and realized they were the last table there, but they rudely remained. They left me $5 each, which was roughly 20% on their bills; however, I stayed an extra hour and a half to care for them.
As I said, it's not just one person that gets stuck staying late if a table decides to linger. Each night there is a "checker" in charge of closing the front of the house so that person has to stay until everyone else is gone. Also, there is a "headweight" who is in charge of taking our money and checking our credit card receipts at the end of the night. They have to stay too. As does a manager and the officer on duty that night. Outback is very concerned with safety and every night they pay a police officer to hang around until everyone leaves so that every one is safe. The officers are extremely kind men concerned with our safety and most of them have to work the next morning too. So when they get stuck at Outback until one am, they only get a few hours of sleep.
This may seem like something that is common sense, but you would not believe the number of people who do this. Especially when they are drinking, and in that case a bartender would have to stay late too. So next time you are looking to eat late, consider eating somewhere that closes at a later hour instead of making it to a table just before close. If you have seen the movie Waiting, the scene where the kitchen freaks out and yells when a late table comes in is actually very realistic. Everyone involved is cursing you in the back for sitting at the table late.