BELMONT, MASS. (WHDH) - A restaurant hostess in training got a valuable lesson from her manager on what to do when an A-list celebrity comes looking for a table.
Last week, 19-year-old Sarah Ananian was training to be a hostess at “The Wellington” — a new fine-dining restaurant set to open in downtown Belmont.
“I get this list and one of the many names on the list is Tom Brady,” she said. “So I start to freak out, I am aware that many famous, well-known people have frequented their locations before, so I am thinking maybe this is the real deal.”
Ananian was supposed to keep it cool and discreet. But it’s Tom Brady!
“So I let everyone know,” she said, “in everyone’s ear, letting everyone know. And then I got so excited that I told my friends on Snapchat.”
Sarah fired off the snaps, declaring “this is real” in one and telling people she’s “crying from excitement” in another.
Her friends were quick to chime in.
“They’re screen-shotting everything, like posting it on their stories,” she said. “It gets out.”
Word spread so far and so fast that people actually started camping out across the street and waiting in the back of the restaurant, all of them hoping to see Brady.
Brady was never actually on his way.
Then reality set in — and Sarah learned it was all a joke.
“I was like, ‘Oh no, I probably shouldn’t have done this,'” she said.
Management had dropped Brady’s name as a little test.
“The staff got a bit excited,” said restaurant co-owner Damian DeMagistris. “There was some buzz around that. It was a good learning experience to see how everyone reacted and if they could keep it cool. And it was fun.”
Ananian tweeted about how bad she is at keeping secrets — a tweet that got a quarter-million likes.
Now she knows how to act if Brady really walks through the door.
“Same as anyone else,” she said. “Same treatment, nothing crazy. Maybe I’ll pop a mint beforehand, but that’s it.”
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