Do you believe restaurants purposely lie about wait times?

So I took my girlfriend to Red Lobster for Valentine’s Day. Got to the podium, and was told it was a two and a half hour wait. We had nothing else to do so we sat around. Actual wait ended up being a half hour or so. Very pleasing.

Anyway I originally thought he just told me two hours and thirty minutes as a large approximation. Giving the parties before me all a large amount of time to finish their meal, though majority finished prior to.

But then I began thinking: Sure a lot of business is great, but a packed house is a lot of stress on the staff. Waiters/Waitresses are taking on additional tables, service tends to be a tad slower, chefs have to cook meals back to back rather rushed, etc… One way to lower this mass of customers is to stick a large wait at the door. Not only to make the workload more manageable by giving the staff so recuperation time but will scare away some customers while keeping the ones who really want to eat there (Me.) In addition, if you are expecting to wait a good two and a half hours and instead get in after say forty-five minutes, you’re more pleased then the guy who was told he had to wait fourty-five minutes and did indeed wait that long.

I don’t know, I’m just rambling. Your thoughts?