Campers - the bane of the server's existence

Every server has to deal with this to a degree, it is part of the territory. Campers. People who sit in your section for exceptionally long periods of time, costing you money.

If you want to finish your drink, enjoy your cheese cake, or tell one last story, that's fine. But then go. Go home. Go outside. Go to $tarbuck$. Go elsewhere.

I understand you want a nice, relaxed pace. You want to enjoy yourself and your company. I'm here to facilitate that. But after 90 minutes, you are costing me money unless you are tipping heavily. After 2 hours, I'll begin wondering which car tires to slash. After 3 hours I might begin praying you die slowly in a fiery crash on the way home. In front of your children. And the only thing to put out your smoldering corpses will be an elephant with incontinence.

I'm here to serve you, but when you start taking away my livelihood, my ability to make ends meet, and to put food on my table, there is a problem. Think of that booth where your wide ass appears to have planted itself and sprouted roots in as a rented parcel of real estate. Rent increases every half hour after the first hour.

I don't care if your long lost friend just came out of a coma and has the the map to Atlantis to share with you. I have bills to pay. Your 15% does not cover me for 3 hours of you sitting in my section unless you are tipping 15% on $400.

Worse are you assclowns who are conducting business in restaurants. Here's a hint - if your mortgage broker/wedding photographer/wedding planner/insurance agent/pimp asks to meet you at a restaurant, and then sits there with you for 2 hours, and leaves only 15% on the appetizer and 3 drinks you ordered, they aren't going to give you good service down the road either. If they'll screw their waiter that blatantly, they won't bat an eye when the time comes to bend you over too. Don't sign any contracts. Run, don't walk away from this inconsiderate prick.

Certainly corporate monkeys at Red Lobster play a part in all of this. Some high level numbnutz thought that limiting every server to only having 3 tables at a time was a great idea. Perhaps a great idea for them, but a sucktastic one for servers across the land. If granny and her best pal Betty want to sit in my section for 4 hours playing cards, sharing pictures of inbred grandchildren, and swapping recipes for shit nobody in their right mind would ever eat, that means I get to wait on 2 paying tables for 3 of those 4 hours. Unless granny is rolling large and drops a $30-40 tip, the likelihood is that night's earning potential just went down the toilet like all the fiber she eats. And the local managers can't help. They can't look and see that Joe's table has been sitting there for 2 hours and no longer requires service. Oh they can "see" it, but there is nothing they can do about it. The managers can (and have) literally LOST THEIR JOBS for letting a server take a 4th table. Even if one of those tables is people in a coma who have been sitting there for 6 hours without so much a twitch to indicate they are alive. That table counts against the server's 3 tables. And what really hurts is when two tables of camping asshats are sitting in your section simultaneously.

I've seen servers contemplating how much time they would do for punching out old ladies playing cards at one of their tables. I suspect that time would go faster than the time spent waiting for these people to leave our restaurants.