`I know, but that's only a representation...' I tried to explain.
`But nothing,' he interrupted. `I appreciate that there will inevitably be differences between a photograph and the actual meal, but what you've brought to me here bears very little resemblance to the food I ordered. The bacon's undercooked. The mushrooms are overcooked. The scrambled egg is lumpy. Do I need to go on?'
`So do you want me to...' I began.
`That was what I ordered,' he sighed, tapping the photograph with his finger again, `and that is what I expect to be served. Now you be a good girl and run along back to your kitchen and try again.'
A genuine complaint I can deal with, but I have a real problem when people try and patronise me. I was so angry that I couldn't move. It was one of those second-long moments which seemed to drag on forever. Did I try and argue with this pathetic little man, did I tell him what he could do with his bloody breakfast, or did I just swallow my pride, pick up the plate again and take it back to the kitchen? Much as I wanted to go for either one of the first two options, commonsense and nerves got the better of me. I picked up the plate and stormed back to the kitchen.
`Bloody man,' I snapped as I pushed through the swinging door. In the kitchen Jamie and Keith, the two chefs on duty, stopped playing football with the remains of a lettuce and stood and looked at me.
`Who's rattled your cage?' Jamie asked.
`Fucking idiot outside. Wants his breakfast to look exactly the same as the picture in the menu.'
`Tell him to fuck off and get a life,' Keith sighed as he kicked the lettuce out through the back door.
I stood and stared at the pair of them, waiting for either one of them to move. `What do you expect me to do about it?' mumbled Jamie.
`Make another bloody breakfast,' I answered, `you're the cook, aren't you?'
Christ, these two were stupid. Jamie was still looking at me with his mouth hanging open as if I'd just asked him to prepare forty meals in ten minutes. All I was asking him to do was his job. It was what he was being paid for, for God's sake. If he'd done it right first time he wouldn't have to do it again now.
`Fucking hell,' he complained as he snatched the plate from me. He studied the faded photograph on a copy of the menu stuck to the wall and took a clean plate from the cupboard. Then he took the food from the original plate, rearranged it on the clean one, warmed it up in the microwave and then slid it across the work surface towards me.
`You expect me to take this out to him?' I said, not quite believing what I was seeing.
`Yes,' he grunted. `Looks more like it does on the menu now, doesn't it?'
Keith started to snigger from behind the newspaper he had picked up.
Knowing that there was no point in arguing with either of the chimps I was working with I picked up the plate and turned back round. I stood behind the doors for a couple of seconds to compose myself and looked out through the small porthole windows into the restaurant. I could see my nightmare customer sitting at his table, looking at his watch and tapping his fingers on the table impatiently, and I knew that whatever I did he was going to give me a hard time when I went back out to him. If I went back too quickly he'd accuse me of not having had time to prepare his food properly. If I kept him waiting too long he'd be just as incensed... I decided to wait for a few seconds longer.
Customers were the worst part of my job, and today I had been landed with the very worst type of customer. We got all sorts of passing trade at the restaurant, and there tended to be a couple of customers like this one coming in each week. They were usually travelling sales reps who were stopping in the motel just up the bypass. As a rule they were all badly dressed, loud, rude and ignorant. Maybe that was why they did the job they did and spent their time travelling around the country? Perhaps their wives (if anyone had been foolish enough to marry them) had kicked them out? Perhaps that was why they all came in here with an attitude like they had something to prove. Bastards the lot of them. It wasn't my fault they were so bitter and insecure, was it?
I pushed myself back out through the door and stood cringing next to the customer's table.
`That's better,' he said to my surprise as I put the plate of food down in front of him. Thank God for that, I thought as I quickly began to walk away.
`You're welcome, you wanker,' I muttered under my breath.
`Just a minute, girl,' the customer shouted as I reached the kitchen door. The three other customers in the restaurant looked up and watched me walk back to the table.
`Yes, Sir?' I answered through gritted teeth, doing my damnedest to remain calm and polite and not empty his pot of tea into his lap.
`This is cold,' he complained. He skewered a sausage on his fork, sniffed it and then dropped it back onto his plate in disgust, sending little balls of dried-up scrambled egg shooting across the table.
`Is it really?' I asked with obvious sarcasm and mock concern in my voice. `Yes, it is,' he snapped. `Now you listen to me, missy, you scuttle back over to your little kitchen right now and fetch me a fresh breakfast. And while you're there, send the manager out to see me. This really isn't good enough.'
There may well have been some justification to his complaint, but the tone of his voice and the way he spoke to me was completely out of order. I wasn't paid enough to be patronised and belittled. It wasn't my fault I had bills to pay and no other way of getting the money to pay them. It wasn't my fault that...
`Are you going to stand there looking stupid all day,' he sneered, `or are you going to go somewhere else and look stupid instead?'
That was it. The customer is always right, they say, but there are limits. Here at the Monkton View Eater, it seemed, the customer was always an asshole.
`Look, I'm sorry if the food isn't up to the standard you were expecting,' I began, somehow managing to still sound calm, even if I didn't feel it, `I'll get that sorted out. But there is no need to be rude to me. I'll go and get you...'
`Listen,' he said, the slow and tired tone of his voice indicating that it was a real effort for him to have to lower himself to speak to me, `I'm really not interested in anything more you have to say. Be a good girl and fetch me my food. You are a waitress. You are here to serve me. And if I want to be rude to you then I'll be as rude as I fucking well please. You're paid to take it.'
`No you listen,' I began to pointlessly protest, `I'm not...'
`Get the manager,' he interrupted with a tone of infuriating superiority. `I don't need to speak to you any longer.'
Another one of those moments which seemed to last forever. I was suddenly so full of anger and contempt that, once again, I was too wound up to move. Compounding my awkwardness was the fact that the other customers had all now stopped eating and were watching and waiting to see what I'd do next. I glanced back over my shoulder and saw that the Neanderthals in the kitchen were peering out through the portholes at me too, grinning like the idiots I knew they were.
`Well?' the customer sighed.
I turned and walked, pushing my way through the swinging doors to the kitchen, sending Jamie flying.
`Where's Trevor?'
`Fag break,' Keith replied.
I stormed out through the back door to where Trevor, our so-called manager, was standing smoking a cigarette. He was leaning up the rubbish bins, reading Keith's newspaper.
`Trevor,' I began.
`What?' he grunted, annoyed that I'd interrupted him.
`I've got a problem with a customer. He says he wants to speak to the manager.'
`Tell him you're the manager.'
`Why should I?' He shrugged his shoulders.
`Tell him I've gone out to a meeting.'
`No.'
`Tell him I've got Health and Safety coming.'
`No.'
`For Christ's sake,' he groaned, finally lifting his head from the paper, `just deal with it will you. What the hell do I pay you for? Dealing with customers is your responsibility.'
`Looking after your staff is yours.'
`Oh give it a rest...'
