That Food’s Not For Eating

“You ponce in here expecting to be waited on hand and foot, while I’m trying to run a hotel here. Have you any idea of how much there is to do? Do you ever think of that? Of course not, you’re all too busy sticking your noses into every corner, poking around for things to complain about, aren’t you? Well let me tell you something – this is exactly how Nazi Germany started. A lot of layabouts with nothing better to do than to cause trouble.” — Basil Fawlty

I’ve been reading a lot of books on business and marketing lately (now there’s a sentence I never thought I’d ever say!). I’m like a lot people who do something creative for money…we hate the business side (or look down our noses at it as if it’s something dirty) but if we don’t treat it as a business then we’re just starving artists and that’s no fun. Recent books that I’ve been reading are Love Is The Killer App, Selling The Invisible and even the old favourite, How To Win Friends And Influence People. Now generally I don’t admit to reading these…for some reason I’ve always regarded them as one small step away from self-help books (or recycled common sense). But I’ve had to concede that they do have some excellent points.

Take for example Friday evening. My family had just attended the removal of my Grandfather at Dun Laoghaire church and we all headed over to a local hotel for a drink and some time together. There was a tab at the bar for drinks but as it was 6pm and there were menus on the tables we all decided to order food. The food was really nice, if a little pricey, and we had a good night. It did take awhile for the food to arrive though so by 10pm I was ready to go home. I popped over to the bar to ask if I could pay for my meal. The barman said he needed to ask the manager and when he called him over the manager launched into a little rant about us having ordered the food in the first place. “If you people would have told us you were going to have food as well as drink we might have been better prepared. You only told us you were having a drink and now you all want to come down and pay individually….! It’s just too confusing. You’ll just have to wait for me to figure this out.” I was a little taken aback, was he really giving out to me because not only were we buying drinks at his bar, but we’d also taken them up on their menus and bought food too? Was he annoyed because we were spending more money then he’d originally planned? So, knowing that we’d all just been at a family funeral, he berates me for wanting to pay my bill. Yikes, I guess I won’t make that mistake again.

It didn’t make me angry at all, I was more bemused by the whole thing. He had a perfect opportunity to garner some goodwill with a whole roomful of customers. People who were having a good time and would be perfect for spreading the word about what his bar had to offer. Instead, with a few angry sentences he killed it all dead. I suppose if I was looking for a perfect example that illustrated everything I’ve been reading about, this was definitely it.

One good thing, (and why I’m not going to put the name of the hotel into the post to show up on google) when we were back there the next day after the main funeral, Matt (who wasn’t as amused by the whole thing as I was) said something to the hotel manager, he immediately sat down with him and heard his complaint. He didn’t argue or make excuses but instead apologised profusely. In fact, everyone we met the next day was lovely and I’m willing to say I probably caught that guy on a bad day. Still, it isn’t often that you get that second chance.