How long is too long

[idun]

Just how long do you wait in a restaurant, cafe or bar to get served after being seated????

On Sunday, we left two cafe's after at least quarter of an hour, no sign of being served. Third time lucky though. Sat, menus given and service was quite prompt.

In the past we have walked out of restos too when they simply have left us sitting. And once, when I first got to France, I went to a hairdressers, they washed my hair and left me for over an hour and it was dry. No one seemed to be bothered, so I left there too.

[Mr Ceour de Lion II]

5 minutes is my limit. Plenty of time.

[Judith]

It will surely depend on how busy they are. 

But I would expect to be seated and given the menu and offered aperitifs (if appropriate) as soon as they are not actually serving or dealing with another customer, so yes, perhaps within 5 minutes.   After that, I would expect them to have returned within a reasonable time, again depending on whether aperos have been served, but 5 mins or so, again about what I would expect.  If I can see that they are dealing with customers, serving meals, taking orders, I am prepared to wait longer, if the first stage has as described above has already happened.

I agree that no acknowledgment within 5 mins may indicate a problem of service difficulties.  And after 10-15 minutes I too would consider walking out, or ensuring I got the service I want.

We did one time have considerable problems with a local restaurant, even before getting the menus,  but since by then we had tried the other two restaurants in our small town, which should both have been open, but both were for some reason "fermeture exceptionelle", as we'd already tried them,  so if we wished to eat, we had to stay where we were!.  They are well known for slow service, which is why they were our third (and in this case) our only choice!

Having said all that, I usually find the biggest difficulty is in trying to pay the bill ...

[nomoss]

I think keeping customers waiting is a peculiarity of French restaurants.

At any rate it's the only country where I have experienced this to any extent, and I've been around a bit.

 

 

[idun]

We went at around 3'ish and they had finished lunch service. At the first place the only waitress watched us get a table and then went inside, never to be seen again.

We actually went to the next place along and people took our table and waited as long again before walking off and she never had returned, so that was half an hour. The people who took our table, just waited.

At the second place there were about 6 waiters. They cleared our table and cleared all the tables, but never came with anything at all, so off we went about a quarter of an hour later.

I know that we were in a tourist spot, but, customers need serving, c'est tout!

[Sprogster]

From my experience in France, under their rigid employment laws, restaurants do not have the same flexibility as the UK or USA to staff up at short notice during busier times, by being able to call in zero hours temporary contract staff on a shift by shift basis. So during busy times long waits for service can be the norm.

[idun]

Rigid employment laws for restos and cafés.......in France........ what can I say but mon oeil! I am now going to generalise, but as it is a subject I know far too much about, I would say that greedy bosses would not like having 'their' profits eaten in to by employing more summer staff.

My son worked in restos for years and I really do know exactly what goes on. In his last summer job, a very busy bar/cafe/resto next to a lake the customers were served quickly and efficiently. It wasn't as if the punters could go elsewhere, they were a pretty captive market.