Skip to main content

And so this is Christmas

You can always tell in catering when the festive season is rolling around. Table sizes go up from four to about eight. The wine stays largely untouched, sales of lager and alcopops go through the roof. It's depressing, but that's the nature of the beast. I'm not working in a high-end restaurant, I work in a bistro, and at this time of year the awful reality of that is works dos. All of our regulars, the ones who normally I'd stop and chat to, maybe recommend a new wine I've got in, the ones who ask you what's good today, or how your girlfriend is, whose family histories I know better than my own, sensibly stay away.

In their place come companies nights out. Cowrokers who may hate each other normally and a boss they barely know lumped togther and forced to have a good time on company money. Some things are ineivitable. A secretary will get pissed and start crying. The boss will attempt to cop off with someone. I will get my arse grabbed. They will demand festive songs and wear stupid hats with tinsel on them. They will be singing from the same hymn-book "come on! It's Christmas!"

So on Saturday a drunk tried to start a fight with me over his drinks. Somebody else threw up in the toilet. In the sink. As we manage to the theory that we'd never make a part-timer do something we wouldn't be prepared to do ourselves I cleaned it up. These are things that don't happen at any other time of the year. Merry bastard Christmas.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The last day of the county season

 Look, I never claimed to be cool. As a a cliched middle aged male, I have a number of interests which, if not exactly niche, are perhaps not freighted with glamour. Not exactly ones to set the heart racing. I yearn not for wakeboarding, my cocaine with minor celebrities days are well and truly behind me, you are unlikely to catch me writing graffiti under a motorway bridge. I do cycle, but only as a way of getting from point A to point B, you are unlikely, you will be relieved to hear, to see me purchasing lycra and or/doing triathlons. I like going for a nice walk. I'm fond of a good book. I have a deep attachment to county cricket. Yes, that's right, county, not even the international stuff which briefly captures the nation's fleeting attention once in a blue moon. County cricket. Somerset CCC to be precise, though I'll watch / listen to any of it. The unpopular part of an unpopular sport. Well, that's the public perception, the much maligned two men and a dog. N...
Post a Comment
Read more

D-Day Dos and Don'ts for Dunces

Oh Rishi. Lad.  You have, by now, almost certainly become aware of the Prime Minister(for the time being)'s latest gaffe, as he returned home early from D-Day commemoration events in France, in order to "concentrate on an interview" which, as it turns out was already pre-recorded. There's been a fair bit of outrage, the word "disrespectful" is being bandied about a lot.  The word I'd use is "stupid". It is often said of the Brits that we have no religion but that the NHS is the closest thing we have to one. This, I think, is incorrect, because the fetishisation of WWII is to my mind, far closer to being our object of national veneration.  I understand why, last time we were relevant, fairly straightforwardly evil oppo, quite nice to be the good guys for a change, I absolutely get why the British public worship at the altar of a conflict which, I note, was a very long time ago. I think it's a bit daft, personally, but I understand it. So you...
Post a Comment
Read more

The three most tedious food debates on the internet.

 I very much only have myself to blame. One of the less heralded aspects of running a business is that one is, regrettably, obliged to maintain a social media presence, it's just expected. And, if I have to do it, I'm going to do it very much in my own voice, as I don't tend to have time to stop and think when I'm bunging something on Insta. It seems to have worked okay so far. But, as a man better versed on the online world than he would prefer, I should have known better than to stick up a picture of our bread rolls, fresh out of the oven. In my defence, I did preface said picture by saying "one of the most tedious debates on the internet is what these are called...". Doubtless you've seen the argument somewhere, it's one of the workaday tropes that shithouse FB pages use to drive engagement. Need a few thousand clicks to raise the profile of your godawful local radio station/page about how everything was better in the past/shelter for confused cats?...
Post a Comment
Read more