What is up with restaurants not taking reservations? The past couple years I've noticed that this is becoming more and more of a trend, and I find it highly annoying.

Most fine dining restaurants still take reservations, but typically when I'm making reservations it's because we have additional plans for the evening, like a play or concert, and we don't have extra time to dawdle at dinner. And so fine dining is not even an option since those places take much longer. In those instances, I just want to have dinner at a nice bar & grill type place.

And since our evening schedule will be tight and we won't have time to wait 20-40 minutes for a table, I call the restaurant a few days in advance to make reservations. And I am told they don't take them. So I call another place. They don't take them either. So I call another. And another. One doesn't take reservations but does offer "call-ahead seating." Um, isn't that what I'm doing? I am calling ahead. For seating. Yeah, turns out I'm calling too far ahead. They don't want me to call more than 20 minutes ahead, basically as we're heading out the door. If I call then, they'll put my name on the waiting list. But it's not a reservation. They don't do reservations. DON'T SAY RESERVATION.

I suppose if an establishment is busy enough, they know they'll fill their tables and so it's not worth their while to deal with reservations. But for the love of god, are we no longer capable of making long-term commitments? And by "long-term" I mean three days. Can restaurants really not offer their customers the basic consideration of a reservation? Have so many people bailed on reservations that they've ruined it for the rest of us?

Maybe this doesn't bother most people, but I am a person who plans. I'm a planner. Planning is what I do. And these damn restaurants that don't take reservations are seriously fucking up my plans.