Recently I’ve been getting myself into trouble in restaurants. It’s not that I’ve suddenly become one of those terrible self-entitled diners expressing my opinions no matter how petty… sadly, that’s not a new thing. It’s been my job for near-on 30 years. Professional complainer, me. Nor is it that I’ve developed some booze-fuelled bistro belligerence… it’s happened in ‘dry’ places. Neither was I eating in posh places where the floor staff seem to have instructions to look down on their customers. 

Surely, one of the great skills of floor staff is to bite their tongue and fulfil the request no matter how ridiculous… “Two ice cubes to cool your herbal tea, of course sir”; “you’d like your burger without the meat patty or salami on your vegetarian pizza? Of course, madam”. The elegant professional response to such requests was always proof to me that the old adage that the “customer is always right” was still current no matter how wrong the request is. And then recently it seemed to change. “You can’t do that!” said an aghast server when they saw I had circled dishes on their menu in cheap biro. 

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I should point out this wasn’t a heavy bound volume of handmade vellum in a cover made from kudu hide but a flimsy sheet of photocopy laid in front of each of us like a placemat. At first I thought they were joking but the face was deadly serious… and remained set in a frown even when I pointed out I was ordering for five and my ageing mind could never remember 20 dishes… I even smiled my most disarming smile. 

The frown remained fixed as they stared disconsolately at the ink. “Oh, the owners will be furious”. I didn’t suggest that the $348 of food we’d ordered might cover the 7-cent menu. That would have been churlish. I thought this was an aberration but then a week later I was being pursued across a warehouse dining room floor by a food runner squawking “you can’t do that”. 

My crime in this budget spot where water isn’t brought to the table but has to be collected by thirsty diners from an urn on the far side of the warehouse? Using a couple of empty plastic condiment caddies (piled on industrial racking next to our table) to help me carry six flimsy paper cups of water to our table. I suggested they could help me carry them but that apparently wasn’t sanctioned either. 

So, is the customer no longer right anymore? Are we to be held to account because our own behaviour has started to become aberrant? Or was it because we looked like noisy over 40s (and some!) that needed to be jumped on early in case we started some sort of insurrection? Or are restaurants just under such pressure during the cost of living crisis that they’ve forgotten who is paying the bills? At the end of one of those meals another of my party heads to a group of young floor staff chatting at the bar to ask for the bill. 

The attitude was “Yeah, we’ll get to it”. When it does arrive we can’t divide the bill by five and each pay an equal amount. In the distance I can hear the funeral bells tolling for our right to always be right.

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