We were pretty excited to eat at the Cookhouse after a day of hiking in Lillooet, as it came highly recommended on both Yelp and TripAdvisor.
We (a group of 4) walked in behind another group of about 4 people and stood in the entrance way, waiting to be acknowledged, but it wasn't happening. I get it, the place was super busy and they obviously had limited staff.. Not a problem.
However, there was no sign asking to please wait until seated, and the group in front of us seemed to know the place (maybe locals) and decided to walk in and seat themselves at an empty table. We shrugged and assumed that this was actually a seat-yourself restaurant and chose an empty table near the window.
There were a couple of empty coffee cups and some crumpled-up napkins on the table, so we assumed that this table had recently been vacated, and that the staff had yet to clean the table. Again, not a problem. They were busy.
So then this staff member comes over to us with menus, and is about to hand them to us when she sees the empty coffee cups and used napkins (that have been stuffed into the empty cups) on the table. As we are reaching for the menus, she yanks them back and says, "Oh, I see you decided to kick the other people out of their seats." It was so unexpected that we actually thought she was joking! We were a little bit unsure how to respond, so we probably looked pretty stupid as we sat there with confused looks on our faces. She continued on with, "This table is being used. Couldn't you see that?" My dad apologized and said, "Oh I'm so sorry, we will move. We didn't realize that anyone was still sitting here."
She stormed off before we could say anything else, and we were left sitting there, without menus and unsure of what we should do. At this point, the group at the table next to us has laid down their utensils and were getting up from the table.
The waitress came back with a cleaning rag and a sneer on her face, pointed to this table and said, "THIS table is actually done with their meal, I will clean it off and move you to this table so you don't have to kick anyone else out of their seats." We said, "Ok thanks so much. Again, we didn't realize anyone was sitting there."
As she is wiping down the table, a couple who entered the restaurant behind us comes up and stands by the table, assuming that they will be sitting there after she is finished cleaning it. She looked up at them and snapped, "This table isn't for you! It's for this group who decided it's acceptable to kick people out of their seats."
We moved to the other table, and tried to apologize again. She would huff and leave every time we tried to talk to her, and was totally uninterested and unwilling to listen to our apologies. Even though she had them in her hand, she still hadn't given us menus at this point.
Then, the couple who was "Still using the table we had 'stolen' from them" comes out of the washroom, and heads directly up to the counter to pay, without even looking in the direction of the table they had vacated. They had no idea this was going on in the restaurant while they were using the restrooms, and obviously had no intention of coming back to their table. As they are standing up at the cash register, the server says, (VERY loudly so that the whole tiny restaurant can hear) "WELL. It's a good thing you were finished with your table, because you wouldn't have been able to go back to it anyway. That group over there decided that it would be ok to just kick you out of your seats before you were even finished!" They responded that they actually were finished with the table, (apparent by the empty coffee cups, used napkins and no meal plates left on the table...duh) and that they weren't bothered that we'd secured the table in their obvious departure. I guess that annoyed her, because she refused to acknowledge it, and said again very loudly, "Well, these people just barged in here and sat down! I guess they must be in a real rush to eat or something."
By now, the whole restaurant was staring, and was obviously listening to what was going on. We were so embarrassed just sitting there. We didn't realize that seating ourselves was going to cause so much of a hassle, especially since the group in front of us had done the exact same thing and wasn't being publicly berated for it.
I finally said to my family that I was leaving, and that I didn't feel we warranted this kind of treatment for a simple mistake. We had apologized profusely, offered to go back and stand at the front, offered to help clean up the table to assist the waitress, and had gotten belittled for all of it. I was so angry at this point that I just walked out, because I didn't trust myself not to say anything horribly rude back to this person who was either terrible with people or maybe just having a bad day.
In any case, a couple who had come in the door after us witnessed the whole thing, and were still standing at the front as they watched the waitress rip read more