Once she was at a table, I couldn't make the drink until I had a ticket. She was someone else's customer at that point. When you walk into a restaurant, do you order something from anyone you see or do you wait for your server?
To be fair, she was initially at your bar and ordered from you. Did she cancel her order with you? In my place you communicate with the server if a guest orders then moves to their table. That way you don't get double ordered drinks, and orders don't slip through the cracks.
We didn't rush to get to them because we were busy. Besides that, they had absolutely no sense of common decency. You can't just walk into a restaurant and seat yourself anywhere and expect immediate service. Had they gone through the proper channels, they would have been seated by the hostess and had menus, silverware, etc, and they would have been told a server wild be with them in a couple minutes. But they chose to just sit down and expect us to fall all over them.
On the other hand, they didn't just walk into the restaurant and seat themselves, they went to the bar, saw and heard from you that you were too swamped, then slid to a table. If you guys hadn't been understaffed, they would have been able to stay at the bar and have you serve them.
Yeah, technically they should have gone back up to the hostess and had her sit them, but big groups aren't always that organized once they're inside. One person walks over to a table and mumbles "maybe we should move to a table" then someone walks that way too, and next thing you know they are all chatting and following the group blindly to the table.
Yes we were understaffed. If she'd come to me and said something nicely about waiting for a drink, I probably would have just told her she could have it for free.
And that's where I guess my issue is, because that's what it really boils down to. You were in the weeds, and understandably a bit spread thin and stressed. She was upset by the lack of staff and service, and the wait time. Neither of you were happy going into this, and you weren't able to diffuse the situation because you didn't like how she started the encounter. At the end of the day, a 10 top of drinkers that wanted to sit at your bar ended up being kicked out. Nobody won at all.