In 2005 I spent a few months working as a hostess at a busy upscale restaurant on Newbury Street in Boston. Although I didn't spend a great deal of time there, I learned a lot about the front-of-house of a restaurant -- the motley crew of hosts, servers, food runners and busers who work in the portion of the restaurant that customers normally see.

I also became an initiate to the almost unknown and certainly underappreciated art of "turning tables" -- the practice of getting as many people in and out of the restaurant on a given evening as possible.

On a good night, a fine-dining restaurant can do two full turns of the dining room, and the front-of-house staff are primarily responsible for ensuring that tables are turned smoothly without making customers feel rushed or unappreciated.

Since front-of-house staff do most of the communicating with customers, they are also the most vulnerable to misunderstandings. They must balance the interests of the restaurant, the interests of the individual customer they're dealing with and the interest of the other customers. Some people are much better at walking this line than others. All too often customers and staff are speaking entirely different languages, and everyone winds up offended.

Consider this tale of a recent visit to an upscale suburban Pittsburgh restaurant:

An 81-year-old woman arrived at the restaurant with three others. She and one of her guests carried canes, and when the server took them to their table, which was next to an entrance to the kitchen, they asked to sit at a nearby empty table instead, which had more room for them to put their canes against the wall.

The server begrudgingly allowed them to do so, and they had a leisurely meal of several courses and some wine. As they were eating their dessert and drinking coffee, they were asked to move to the bar to finish their meal. The woman responded that they couldn't be comfortable at the bar, at which point they were told they needed to leave.

Embarrassed and confused, they paid their bill (more than $200) and departed. The woman later called to complain to the chef, wasn't satisfied, and told him she would never return to his restaurant.

Sounds awful, doesn't it? This story inspires almost immediate outrage. But the story isn't so simple.

When I called the restaurant to ask for its side of the story, it was different in a few important ways.

According to the owner, when the woman and her guests were led to one table, they insisted on sitting at another. The server explained that this particular table had been requested by a party, and if they sat there, they would have to be finished with their meal after about two hours. If they sat at the other table, they could have it all night. They chose to sit at the "timed" table.

After 2 1/2 hours had passed, and the expected party had been waiting for its table for several minutes, the management offered to buy the woman and her party coffee and dessert if they would move to the bar to finish. The staff gently reminded them that they needed to leave the table, as they had been told earlier.

The truth probably lies somewhere in between, but whatever actually happened, this was not an ideal situation.

I have witnessed groups in crowded restaurants eased out of their chairs by a manager offering to buy them a round at the bar. I have also witnessed tables told they must complete their meal within a given amount of time. But these meals took place in New York and San Francisco, places where packed restaurants and anxiously waiting crowds necessitate a certain amount of understanding on the part of customers.

While the restaurant staff wasn't doing anything that isn't accepted practice at many restaurants, these kinds of tactics are almost never necessary in Pittsburgh restaurants, so customers are simply not used to them.

As the Pittsburgh dining scene develops in sophistication, more and more restaurants are going to need front-of-house staff capable of handling this type of situation with finesse, a straight face and an eye toward the bottom line. These skills are all the more necessary when the clientele is unused to the pressures of a crowd.

And when restaurants don't have staff with sufficient skill? Either they cater too much to customers and their bottom line suffers, or, as in this case, they don't cater enough and unhappy customers tell everyone they know.

That is probably the final lesson to take from this story: While mishandled customers may suffer from bruised egos, restaurants with bad word-of-mouth eventually may suffer from empty dining rooms. It's clear who winds up with the last laugh.