Date: 10 Nov 2000 A couple nights ago I was at a restaurant with a friend. This restaurant has a sign at the entrance saying 'Please wait to be seated". So we wait by the door, and Waitress 1 notices us right away- it was pretty early in the evening, and they weren't very busy yet. She sweeps her arm to indicate a wide swath of empty tables and asks us to choose one. So we pick one against the wall. This table hasn't been set up yet- no napkins or silverware, and still some crumbs left over on the tabletop. So she tells us to wait a minute and it would be set up. Waitress 2 comes along and notices us at our bare table. She asks us, in a confused voice, whether we've been served, which of course we haven't. She points to the sign by the door and says, "Because you're supposed to wait to be seated...", and then she hastily adds "But that's OK!", and grabs a couple menus for us. Since we already know what we want to order, we stop her from leaving, and she takes our order and takes the menus back. Waitress 1 goes by and notices that our table is still bare. "I thought Amanda was going to serve you..." she says. Then she gathers the cutlery, glasses of water, etc. for our table. Lastly, she hands us menus, and she leaves too quickly for us to tell her we don't need them. A minute or so later, Waitress 2 is going by and notices us with our menus. She double-takes, glancing from us to the slot where the menus are kept. "Did you take your menus back? I could have sworn I took them from you..." Then we tell her that another waitress had given us menus. They must have straightened out the table assignments then, because after that, there was no more confusion. Joel T.