Camper
A camper is a party that stays at the table long after the meal is finished and paid, holding a seat the book had already promised to someone else. The term is floor shorthand rather than a metric, and it surfaces on the busiest services, when one table running long delays every party behind it.
Campers are where hospitality and throughput collide. No operator wants to hurry a guest out of a chair they paid for, and a table sitting through a second seating still costs a turn and pushes the whole queue back by the same amount.
Much of it is created upstream. A book built on optimistic dwell times promises seatings the room was never going to deliver, so the party at table 9 is not really camping; the 8:45 was never available. Teams manage the rest with the tools they have, meaning a properly timed check drop, somewhere at the bar to move a party to, and a note on the guests who reliably settle in for three hours.
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