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Have you ever made a reservation at a restaurant only to show up at the reservation time and be told that you don’t actually have a reservation?
I actually had this happen not too long ago. Thankfully, this was a restaurant where it’s not reservation only and we could wait to be seated, it just meant waiting quite awhile instead of being seated right away.
In this story, one family finds themselves in this situation, but if they don’t have a reservation, they don’t get to eat dinner.
It all ends up being a big mixup, but it took quite awhile to figure out what happened. Keep reading for the whole story.
My extended family has a tradition of doing the Passover Seder at a hotel.
It’s usually a great time, we stay at the hotel for a few days, take some field trips around the area, and generally have fun.
I don’t really get to interact with the hotel staff much, as my grandma and uncles are in charge of booking, paying and all that stuff, but I’ve rarely if ever had any issues with any staff member.
On to the story.
The hotel did something nice for them.
So at this hotel, we booked a deal that includes both breakfast and dinner.
Unrelatedly, my parents’ wedding anniversary happened to fall on one of the dates of our stay, and somehow the hotel knew about this – so they gave them a free meal.
Great! But since we already had breakfast and dinner, we asked if we could use it for lunch.
No problem. My parents let me and my sister use it, we had lunch no problem and all is well.
Uh-oh!
Come dinner time, the entire family (of around 16 people or so) is already eating inside, and my dad and I are running a little late.
As we go to enter, we give the staff member at the entrance our room number as we do every night, and she tells us… that we don’t have dinner booked for today.
Mind you, this was not the first night of our visit, and we had no problems eating dinner on previous nights.
Worth noting that this was not the holiday meal, it was just a regular dinner.
Watch out for OP’s dad!
Now, based on the title of this post, you might guess that my dad is the hero of this story. You might think that he tried to figure out what happened and get it sorted out.
You’d be wrong.
My dad is the kind of unbearable customer who, whenever things aren’t going exactly his way, starts yelling and shouting and yelling some more.
After being told that we definitely don’t have dinner for tonight, he started doing “his thing” and just started yelling.
He sounds pretty crazy!
He walked to the front desk (a short distance away) and yelled at them.
When the manager appeared, he yelled at him too.
I don’t remember the exact ‘exchange’, but I do remember a few bits, my ‘favorite’ being:
“Are you the manager? Get behind the desk! How am I supposed to know you’re the manager if you’re not being the front desk?”
He made another crazy demand.
He also demanded, among other things, that they delete any info about his wedding anniversary.
He always gets like this, and to this day I don’t know what he wants or what he expects to happen when he does.
I tell him that he’s acting like a child, that he needs to either calm down or go somewhere else and let the adults handle this (I don’t think I used that exact phrasing :P), but of course, none of it worked.
I think the uncle is really to blame for the mixup.
In between the yelling and the front desk trying their damn best to answer (this was before the manager was called), I managed to piece together what happened: the free meal was apparently supposed to be used for dinner that night.
I later learned my uncle set it up that way intentionally when booking, he just forgot to tell us (i.e. my parents) or thought we wouldn’t need to know.
By using it for lunch, we unknowingly cancelled the dinner reservation for that night.
Just a classic case of miscommunication. So how do we fix this?
He explained what happened to the manager.
When the manager showed up and after he tried (unsuccessfully – shocker!) to understand anything from my dad, I talked to him, apologized for my dad’s (continuing) behavior and explained the whole situation as calmly as I could with a crazy loud man I happened to be related to yelling in the background.
He understood, and I could see the relief in his eyes that there was someone sensible to talk to…
Now that we understood what went wrong, we can talk about how to fix it! Like actual human beings!
The manager had a good idea.
What he suggested was that we retroactively pay for lunch, which is cheaper than dinner, and use the free meal for the dinner.
I thought this was as good an idea as any.
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I would have preferred to just let us have all meals for the price already agreed upon since this was due to a miscommunication and we thought we were getting that in the first place, but I could see why that would essentially mean they gave us a free lunch, and I could see why he wouldn’t want to be doing any favors to the loud man still yelling in the background.
His uncle also got involved.
I actually don’t know exactly what the settlement was in the end. My uncle, a far more reasonable man than my dad, joined in at some point (he was already eating when this started) and helped sort it out.
I like to think I helped by piecing it together and telling the manager. All I know is that soon enough we were inside having dinner.
My dad wasn’t exactly happy, I don’t think anyone can be after being that angry, but he shut up and ate with everyone.
The manager sounds awesome!
As we were eating, the manager came by and raised a toast with us.
Reading between the lines of what he said it was clear that he was praising me for being a normal person when my dad is awful.
And I guess that wraps it up with a happy ending!
It’s too bad the uncle didn’t mention the situation to OP’s dad. If the dad wanted to be mad at someone, it should be the uncle. Regardless, I’m glad it got straightened out.
Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.
This person shares their opinion.
I’m sure the dad would hate this!
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a girl who thinks her family is doing too much in criticizing the tidiness in her small space.
I find this confusing too.
So, was there a free anniversary meal or not? It doesn’t make sense.
I can understand why the dad was upset when he showed up and was told he didn’t have a reservation, but yelling didn’t solve anything. Talking it out and figuring out what happened led to the solution.
Enjoyed this story? Readers who liked this also read this story about a brother who is concerned about the trouble with splitting funeral costs equally between siblings.
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Jayne Elliott | Contributing Writer, Life & Drama
Jayne Elliott is a contributing writer and editor for TwistedSifter specializing in human interest stories, internet culture, and family dynamics. With over 12 years of editorial experience in digital publishing, Jayne excels at analyzing complex online communities and transforming viral social debates into thoughtful, highly engaging narratives.
Rather than simply aggregating internet drama, Jayne brings a sharp, empathetic editorial eye to everyday dilemmas. She has a unique talent for unpacking the nuances of pop culture and online conflicts, providing readers with relatable, well-researched commentary.
Based in California, Jayne spends her free time outside the newsroom exploring theme parks with her family or beach-combing along the coast.
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Categories: Family & Relationships, Life & Drama
Tags: · anniversary, dad, dinner, ENTITY, hotel, picture, reddit, reservation, Tales From The Front Desk, top
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