Hostess with Too Much Mostess

Mostess?  Mostest?  Even Google can't decide.  CREDIT.

The other day, someone brought up an interesting point on my Formspring account that I hadn't really thought about regarding Hooters.  To summarize, the situation involved a Hooters Girl coming to the table too much and basically being annoying in her Hooterificness.  The question was how do you politely let her know to go away.

Before I go into how I would handle the situation, I think it's interesting to discuss the issue itself.  Hooters prides itself on not only offering good food service, but a certain level of entertainment.  As the Hooters Girl manual lamely puts it, Hooters expects its severs to all be the "hostess with mostess."  Excuse me while I gag.  Tired clichés aside, one of the ways that Hooters expects us to entertain our guest is to speak with them often.  They encourage us to get to know our customers and - when appropriate - even sit down right there at the table with them.

Yet even with the expectation that this happens at Hooters there is still a very fine line of over serving the customer (and I'm unfortunately not talking about alcohol).  How does a Hooters Girl give that expected higher level of service without taking it to the point of annoyance? 

This is where reading your table is crucial to the role of a Hooters Girl.  Basically it's not just your job to be the hostess, but also to know when the hostess should let her guests be and mingle elsewhere.  I mean it's fairly obvious that a table full of business men at lunch needs to be helped differently than a family coming in for dinner.  I've always considered the reading of tables to be a strength of mine; which is probably why I've never even imagined the scenario or overdoing it.  What it comes down to is that not every table wants to talk to you.  Believe it or not some people really do just come to Hooters to eat.

So what do you do if your Hooters Girl - or any server for that matter - is being too chatty?  Well you suck it up and tell them.  I realize this is often easier said than done, but I certainly would want to know if I was being an annoying little bitch.  In the end I actually want you to enjoy your meal.  Not only is this because I really don't want to be irritating, but also because odds are the more I bug you the more my tip goes down.  And that, my friends, is no bueno.

Now if you don't want to up and tell your server to get the eff away from you, you can totally feel free to lie.  I'm not against white lies to avoid awkward social situations.  Feel free to tell your server you have business to discuss and would prefer privacy.  Or that you need to let your dining partner know the results of your recent STD test.  Just do so with a really solemn expression.  I'm sure that would chase her away real quick.