The way people behave in restaurants – where they have buying power but not ultimate control – can offer significant clues about their personalities. Since a restaurant is a little microcosm of life, you can find out a lot about a person when observing how they interact with staff, experience their food and cope with any occasional hiccups in service.

If you recognise any concerning behaviours when dining out, you might want to think twice about a second date. After all, as Chris Van Dyne, founder of Cosmic Pie Pizza in Santa Fe, New Mexico said, “Restaurants are stress tests. You’ve got time limits, money on the line and the potential for little annoyances everywhere. So if someone’s rude in a restaurant, they’ll be rude in traffic, in arguments and in bed.”

While a restaurant staff endures your bad date for just a couple of hours, you might end up with that person long-term if you don’t pay attention now. Chef Jonathon Scinto warned: “Each of these behaviours is like a preview trailer for a full-length toxic personality you don’t want to co-star with.”

1. They play games with seating

One well-known power play occurs when it’s time to be seated, said Rick Camac, executive director of industry relations at the Institute of Culinary Education’s New York City campus. He’s owned, operated, managed and consulted at 20 restaurants and bars since 2000, so he’s well-versed on the kind of ego tripping that begins before the first course is served.

“One of the worst examples happens when someone with a party of two requests a bigger table, like a four-top, in a clearly very busy restaurant,” Camac said. When it’s obvious that every other couple in the place has been seated at a two-top, it takes a real jerk to insist on special treatment. Demands like that show just how clueless – and power-driven – your date actually is.

Chef Douglas Keane, owner of the Sonoma Michelin-starred restaurant Cyrus and author of the memoir “Culinary Leverage: A Journey Through the Heat,” offered his own observations on power plays when it comes to seating.

“There are certain people who heard somewhere that they should never accept the first table they’re offered,” he observed. “They believe it’s obviously the intention of the restaurant to give the absolute worst table to them, and refusing the table is a sign of being smarter than the staff. It’s usually a sign of insecurity, and........

© HuffPost