JedFonner.com

We’ve all experienced it - you go to your favorite restaurant, or just the restaurant with the really strong Margaritas, and there’s a wait to get a table. So the hostess puts your name on the list and gives you a little, round hockey-puck device that she says will alert you when your table is ready. Except there are a few issues:

• The pager only works within a very small and completely undefined radius, leaving you paralyzed with fear that you will wander too far away and lose your table
• The pager is unwieldy - it doesn’t fit in your pockets so you must continue to hold it. And don’t even think about putting it down unless you want to lose your table to a hungry pager thief
• You constantly hit the thing just to see if it does anything and are always wondering: have the batteries have gone dead, has its radio died, have the lights broken?

And aside the annoyance to the patrons, the restaurant must maintain these devices, train their employees how to use them, replace them when people walk off with them, etc.

This seems ridiculous nowadays. Here’s why: everyone already carries around a little device capable of emitting sound and light when triggered by a certain radio frequency. They’re called cell phones. Seriously, how hard would it be when you add yourself to the waiting list at a restaurant for them to just put your phone number in the computer, and then the computer could automatically call you (or send text, or page you, whatever) to let you know your table is ready.

Then you’d be free to go for drinks at the bar or a better bar nearby, checkout the bookstore next door, or do whatever you want, knowing full well that you won’t lose your table. And if you are a Luddite and don’t have a cellphone, then maybe the hostess will dust off some old pager to give to you. But I’m guessing someone in your group has a cell phone.

I think the only reason people don’t complain more about pagers is because, and I’ll gladly admit this, they are an improvement over the old system where the hostess just yelled out your name when your table was ready. But just because pagers are an improvement doesn’t mean there isn’t a better system. I realize the restaurant-pager lobby is a powerful one, but I think we can fight them.