Tuesday, August 11, 2009

If You Thought Fawlty Towers Was Fiction........

This is way off topic, but I have to post it.

We have two young guests staying with us at the moment. One is a nephew of 13 from the Midlands and the other is his Spanish friend of about the same age. We took them to Brighton today, where we did the usual seasidey things before setting off for home. We turned into a branch of a well-known pub-restaurant chain. They were busy, but we placed our order and sat down with a drink to await our food. 55 minutes later, and more than an hour after our arrival, the food arrived. One young guest pointed out that his chips were cold, as they indeed were. So were the other lad's, and so were mine. My 8 oz medium-rare rump steak was in two pieces, well-done, and cold to match the chips. I called for the manager, and I told him, in a reasonable manner, what was wrong. He was totally professional, immediately apologised, and told us that the whole meal would be free, as would our choice of desserts. I said that I was happy to pay for the drinks. While this was going on my wife was eating her chicken-with-some-kind-of-pineappley-rice dish. This was reasonably hot, but unfortunately contained not a shred of chicken. Since the meal was now free, we were going to leave it at that, until my wife held up her fork on which laid a piece of soggy paper, that I flattened out onto my napkin. It was the defrosting and microwaving instructions for the factory-prepared rice that had found its way into the dish, which is more than the chicken had done. I walked over to the manager who looked alarmed, and I said: "I'm fine, don't worry, you have handled things all right, but you ought to see this". The poor sod looked stunned, and called over his deputy, who took the evidence and marched off to the kitchen.
She decided to serve the free puds herself (I had coffee, having somehow lost my appetite) and called over a waitress to clear our table. The first thing this girl did was to knock my wife's wine glass. The deputy's hand shot out like a striking snake, and just stopped the lot from dropping into Mrs.B's lap. She sat in an adjacent chair and said: "You won't believe this, but we are not usually this bad. I am just going out to type a letter for you to come back and have four free meals on us. I will also cancel your payment".
The managers were professional, and followed the golden rule of apologising straight away. My free meal, plus my upcoming free meals will cost the restaurant well over £100, so if you see in the papers that the cooking and waiting staff of a Berkshire pub-restaurant branch have all been found murdered, I think I will know who did it.

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