Restaurants, Please Just Answer Your Phone

How restaurants lost the plot between efficiency and basic customer service

Look, I get it. OpenTable revolutionized dining. Click, confirm, show up. No awkward phone conversations with hurried hosts who can barely hear you over the dinner crowd. It's streamlined, it's efficient, and it probably saved restaurants thousands of hours of "Um, do you have anything available for tonight?" calls.

But somewhere between embracing the digital age and optimizing ops, restaurants forgot something pretty simple: sometimes people need to actually talk to another human being.

Here's what drives me up the wall. You're running 20 minutes late to your 7 p.m. reservation. Traffic was a nightmare, parking was worse, and now you're spiraling because you know they probably gave away your table. So you do what any reasonable person would do — you call the restaurant.

Except there's no number. Or …