It sounds like you seated yourself at a section that wasn't open. "Sections" are often not obvious to customer, but they're really important to the wait staff. You don't grab tables outside your section; it can be seen as attempting to grab more tips. (A Red Lobster probably has tip pooling, but still, working outside your section is a no-no.) Eventually they got somebody to open your section.
Threatening to call security is also a no-no. He should have called the manager over. But if the host desk was unoccupied for more than a couple of minutes, it sounds like the manager was off fighting some kind of fire.
With the host desk unoccupied, the restaurant would prefer that you ask a passing waiter to find the host.
So I'm not surprised that wait staff were ignoring you. A better waiter would have figured out what was going on and signaled the host to come talk to you, and move you into an open section. But if you're waiting tables at Red Lobster, you're not being hired for your initiative.
Anyway... I hope that helps explain what happened. The upshot: don't seat yourself, but it sounds like they were being mismanaged anyway.
Been a while, but I served tables at RL for 4 years (in 2 different locations). Did not do tip sharing. However, we had designated sections and were prohibited from running more than 3 tables at a time; easily could be that the servers could have gotten in trouble for taking this extra table.
It sounds like you seated yourself at a section that wasn't open. "Sections" are often not obvious to customer, but they're really important to the wait staff. You don't grab tables outside your section; it can be seen as attempting to grab more tips. (A Red Lobster probably has tip pooling, but still, working outside your section is a no-no.) Eventually they got somebody to open your section.
Threatening to call security is also a no-no. He should have called the manager over. But if the host desk was unoccupied for more than a couple of minutes, it sounds like the manager was off fighting some kind of fire.
With the host desk unoccupied, the restaurant would prefer that you ask a passing waiter to find the host.
So I'm not surprised that wait staff were ignoring you. A better waiter would have figured out what was going on and signaled the host to come talk to you, and move you into an open section. But if you're waiting tables at Red Lobster, you're not being hired for your initiative.
Anyway... I hope that helps explain what happened. The upshot: don't seat yourself, but it sounds like they were being mismanaged anyway.