Being in the hospitality industry, I quite often come across irritating people. So I thought I'd share a few of my favourites with you.
Last week, I was working in my parents restaurant on a Saturday evening. An elderly looking couple strolled in and I immediately showed them to a table and attempted to give them a menu. I am presuming they were from either Australia or New Zealand, going on their accents.
When I say 'attempted' to give them a menu, I really mean it. The old chap just put down his menu, unopened, on the table and then asked me if we served venison, which we do. He says, 'I'll take that' without even looking what it comes with. As a matter of fact, it comes with a port & thyme sauce, not that he cared/noticed.
I then attempted to ask the lady what she would like. And so commenced the interrogation... "Where are your mussels from?" "How big are the mussels?" "What do the mussels come with?" "Where is your lobster from?" "Is it fresh or frozen?" "What does it come with?"...... and so on and so forth. She was even shown some of the mussels to check how big they were! She eventually ordered the lobster which is accompanied by a lemon & tarragon butter.
I was then asked what wines do we serve, so I showed them the wine list, which they had from the beginning but looking at that would have been far too easy obviously. Apparently, all of our wine is overpriced. Which is news to us. If anything, we should be charging more! But in NZ or AUS it's obviously a lot cheaper and probably much better.
They didn't turn out to be too bad in the end, I suppose. But I would recommend to anybody eating at a restaurant, if you read the food and wine menu before ordering, it tends to make things go a lot quicker. It means your waitress, who quite frankly has more important things to be doing, doesn't have to stand at your table for ten minutes whilst you enquire about the origin and cooking method of every item on the menu and complain about how expensive wine is. Drink tap water, simple.
I regret volunteering to serve them really. Horrible people.
Perhaps they never learned to read??
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