Last week I was involved in some unpleasantness. I was enjoying a Friday evening drink with a group of work colleagues, followed by dinner at an inner city restaurant highly regarded for its schnitzel. I had never eaten there, but had heard much of the quality of the menu by two of my colleagues who lived locally and had been dining there regularly for a number of years.

The restaurant was full, so we registered with the Maitre-d for a table of five and were told there would be a wait of around half an hour. We headed upstairs to the bar and enjoyed a drink and were eventually called to a table. The waiter appeared with just the right amount of delay and sufficient haste, then took our order. Our party of five ordered only three mains and one side. The fifth member of our party was not hungry and chose not to order. The waiter wrote down our requests, nodded courteously and scuttled off toward the kitchen.

Not five minutes later the Maitre-d stormed over to our table to hold court. "You do know there is a minimum order per person of one main course?" he exclaimed with more than generous serve of snootiness, scrunching his nose in distaste. "I cannot have three mains and one side. I have thirty people waiting to be seated! You have a table for five and you order three dishes!"

"If that's the case, then I'll leave," responded the colleague who had ordered the side dish. Without delay she stood and began to make her way toward the exit, taking the other non-main-ordering member of our party with her. "We'll leave these three. We can catch up after. Let's go."

"This is ridiculous!" exclaimed another of the party. "We come here almost every week," he continued, " and you are telling us what we can and cannot order. We'll go too, we'll eat somewhere else."

"But what about the schnitzel...?" I thought, half'rising from my chair with reluctance.

In the face of a walk-out the snooty Maitre-d yielded and allowed us to stay without meeting the minimum order policy. But the damage had already been done and we spent the rest of the meal vilifying our host and reconsidering the frequency of future visits.

After much discussion We did not have a problem with the restaurant's policy of a minimum order per person, and understand that such a policy exists to prevent large groups from simply ordering dessert or coffee and taking up valuable real estate during peak dining times. The problem was that the policy was not clearly advertised and not mentioned at all by our waiter when we ordered. This might have been an error on the waiter's part, and if it was, then the Maitre 'd should have taken this up with him, not with customers. He made matters worse with his outrageous claim that there were to many people waiting for a table, whilst for the duration of our meal both tables adjacent to ours remained unoccupied. 

Good hospitality workers should be discrete, polite, and courteous, but the most important thing they should do, is serve. Sadly, a growing number of our waiters and bartenders are not interested in subordinating themselves to strangers. It is even more annoying that many consider themselves more important than their customers.

There are many waiters out there who can provide excellent service and do so with a little attitude and flair. However, attitude should be used sparingly and only worked into a waiter's repertoire once the basic skills have been mastered, not beforehand. Films like The Concierge, 54 and Cocktail have created the myth that hospitality is a glamorous industry. Every year thousands of starry-eyed youngsters enlist in bartending courses, sit tests for RSA and RSG certificates, and spend hours on end juggling empty Galliano bottles in suburban garages so that they might be cool. Having worked in several bars over the years, I can only say that it is immeasurably cooler to be on the other side of the bar, and that little attention is paid to the person providing the service, unless the service is poor. In my reckoning this includes waiting too long for service because of inane flair bartending, or snooty wait staff with attitude. It is high time that hospitality staff brush up on the trite, but worthy truism, that the customer is always right.