Better than U-Haul is not a standard

Valentine’s Day is tough for restaurants. The restaurant is probably full, and is frequently unable to accommodate hopeful patrons who don’t have reservations. In this environment, restaurants understandably don’t want to hold tables for people who don’t show up on time (for some reasonable value of on time).

So the Elephant Walk, where Lisa and I have celebrated every Valentine’s Day since our first date (which was on Valentine’s Day), has decided to call everyone with reservations for tonight and leave messages reminding us that we have a reservation and letting us know that our reservation will be cancelled if we are more than 15 minutes late. It doesn’t bode well that they couldn’t be bothered to include something like “We’re looking forward to seeing you this evening.” This would never have flown when Tony ran the show at the Elephant Walk, back in the long-ago days of phenomenal service. And it’s a good thing that our destination this evening wasn’t a surprise to one of us, since we do still have a quaint shared landline instead of individual cell phones.