Manuel moments
Looking to entertain some visiting friends over the weekend, we found ourselves in a Bloomsbury restaurant on Saturday night. And fortunately for us, entertainment was unwittingly the forté of the restaurant we chose.
It started off well. We enter the semi-full restaurant, explain that we haven’t made a booking and the four of us are still allocated a nice table. We begin flicking through the menu and the wine list, assuming that a waiter would soon come to take our order – as normally happens in these situations. A waiter did arrive, not to take our order though, but to remove all the wine glasses from the table.
Seeing our confusion, another waiter comes over and helps him take away the rest.
Waiter No.2 then returns and asks whether we’d like to order drinks. W. orders a bottle of Merlot. ‘What number is that sir?‘ Waiter No.2 asks, leaning over and helpfully pointing out that all the drinks have numbers. It’s No.17. Job done, he swiftly leaves before we can order anything else.
At this point, Waiter No.3 turns up, asking us whether we had made a booking. ‘No‘ W. replies. This answer is clearly unsatisfactory. Waiter No.3 comes round to the other end of the table and whispers to me ‘Are you sure you haven’t made a booking? ‘. ‘No‘ I assure him ‘we haven’t. Is that a problem?’. ‘No‘ he says, before disappearing into the kitchen.
Some moments later all hell breaks loose in the kitchen. We hear shouting, clashing and banging. Finally, Waiter No.1 emerges sheepishly bringing all the wine glasses back out. Unfortunately, we make things difficult for him by pointing out that only three of us are drinking the wine. Ever helpful, Waiter No. 2 arrives and interrogates heavily pregnant F. ‘You’re not drinking wine? What are you drinking then?’
Drinks eventually sorted out, it’s time to order food. But not without more shouting from the kitchen and Waiter No.1 returning to assure us that everything is alright. ‘There has been a problem’ he says ‘but it is ok now.’
It is fine. Until the food starts to arrive. Three of the starters come from the kitchen and we patiently wait for the fourth. Waiter No.2 notices that something is amiss. He comes over and goes to clear away the knives and forks from in front of the still-waiting R. Waiter No.3 arrives with the dish and glares at Waiter No.2 who backs away quickly.
Not put off by the guffaws from our table, Waiter No.1 re-emerges and whispers again that there has been a problem, but its fine and we’re not to worry.
Thankfully for the rest of evening, it is fine. We order another bottle of No.17 and enjoy the food, which is exceptionally good. Luckily for them.
Tags: mindless minutiae
September 29th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
I’m sorry to say that I had numerous Basil Fawlty moments at the weekend – I was working at a Conference in Birmingham which was handled by inept venue staff, and I’m sure I got to the point of running around in a jittery manner and barking at them in the end.
My least favourite character? The janitor, who for no good reason at all saw fit to lock a senior civil servant out of a room I’d just set up for her to hold a presentation in. For “security”, apparently. She was very offended, it was like something out of a seventies sitcom. The venue only had one key for each meeting room (pathetic in itself – if anybody else had it, you couldn’t get access to the room) and the janitor had some sort of “master” which he used frequently, locking people out of rooms which I’d just set up and they needed to use just in case they stole papers or something, or helped themselves to chilled water which wasn’t rightfully theirs.
The reception staff also lost their guides showing where the delegates should be twice in an hour. “Nobody’s ever given us that information!” they said accusingly. Twice in one hour, after they’d been given timetables by me or my colleague. And in any case, if you don’t have information like that, surely you should raise alarms at a much earlier stage, rather than just let people wander around like lost lambs?
Don’t get me started on their emails containing conflicting information, or the staff members who would rather talk about Hollyoaks amongst each other than serve waiting people… this is the hardest conference I’ve ever done, and most of it was because I found myself running around doing the venue’s job for them, or making sure they knew what was going on (invariably not).
No Manuels, unfortunately – the foreign staff there were much better than the native Brummies.
September 29th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
c&m & d23 It does seem like you both been having fun! hope this week is better.
September 29th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Oh boy, 23Daves your weekend sounds like hell on earth. Our night of waiter incompetence was actually pretty amusing but its another matter when its work and you’re already stressed about things running smoothly (or not). I am constantly appalled by other people’s ‘professionalism’ in these situations. I don’t know how some places remain in business. Hope the rest of your week is less tiresome.
September 29th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
P.S. You’re not at the Conservative Party conference are you?! That would be stressful.
September 30th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Not guilty, although some of them were using the venue and staying in the same building. A prominent shadow cabinet minister’s mother was seen to be very upset by the service as well, and of course tried to get me to help instead when I had other fish to fry (and in any case couldn’t care less).