People who have been trained to wait on tables have an uncanny knack of turning up to deal with requests at exactly the right moment. Such people are very rare.
It’s generally considered rude to attract the attention of waiting staff by waving or even snapping one’s fingers (despite the fact that they may have been discussing the football results together in a corner for the last 20 minutes). Not only that, but inexperienced staff may (eventually) respond out of turn to particularly intense waving or snapping -making everyone even more agitated.
Today’s invention provides a way for staff to be made discreetly aware of the requests of restaurant customers -and in the order in which they arise.
Every table in a restaurant has a torch fixed to the centre, pointing upwards. When people at a table need something, they switch the torch on and it creates a pool of light on the ceiling. A simple integral eggtimer simultaneously starts to pour sand in front of the torch lens, reducing the size of the illuminated region above each.
Staff can thus work out, by glancing upwards, which table has been waiting longest for service at any given moment.
