Host

What is your role in the restaurant?

I answer phones and record reservations. I also greet and seat guests as they arrive at the restaurant. Guests can either call, or use the website to make reservations, so it is necessary for me to consult the system before I seat customers. I also need to update the reservations system when I seat customers so that someone online can’t reserve the same table.

What challenges do you face?

I think the biggest problem I have is the reservations system. It seems like it is never working properly. Sometimes I try to add a reservation and it takes forever. I have customers lined up waiting for their tables and I don’t have time to be dealing with the slow software. Or I might go to look up the reservation for a customer and it takes so long to find it. The customers get frustrated and I am always apologizing to them for the slow software. Sometimes, after waiting forever for the information to come back, the system just crashes and I get nothing. Then it takes minutes or in rare cases hours for it to come back up. In the meantime I am struggling to figure out who is supposed to have a reservation and who isn’t.

I have started printing out all the reservations periodically during the day. It helps to speed things up because I don’t have to use the software. But it doesn’t work for more recent reservations, so I end up looking at the print outs first and then only going to the software if I don’t find the person on the sheet.

• Host takes reservations in person or via phone
• Reservations can also be made online
• Host seats reservations as well as walk ins.
• Reservation system is unresponsive
• System often fails
• Printouts being used to deal with the failures of the software