Saturday, Nov. 12, 2005
Worst. Waitstaff. Ever.

I came into Montreal on Thursday to spend some time with the daughter and get a jumpstart on the Christmas shopping.

For the record I would like to state that starting your Christmas shopping early in November is not anal, it's, um, er, ah ... oh, alright it is anal. Fine.

Thursday night we hooked up with some friends of hers and went to Concordia University for an amazing speech by the UN Special Envoy on HIV/AIDS in Africa, Stephen Lewis.

Four years into a job that would have made a lesser person throw themselves over a cliff in despair, and Lewis refuses to give up. The situation is dark, but it is not without hope and if you want to learn more about it, A Race Against Time" will give you what I heard Thursday.

It is amazing how seeing living, breathing people who do great good can raise your spirits.

After the talk we headed out to get something to eat at a local Thai restaurant. You know, I have had bad waitstaff in my life, but Candid Camera level bad waitstaff?

A first.

It started with my order for Tom Yum soup. I love Tom Yum soup. The waiter asked if I wanted it spicy. I said yes.

"Spicy here is really spicy," he said.

"That's okay," I said.

"Spicy here is really spicy," he said. I blinked. Did he think I was deaf? Learning impaired? Um, really spicy. I got it.

"That's okay," I repeated.

"Spicy here is really spicy," he said for the third time.

At this point I felt like I was living that scene in the movie "A Few Good Men" where Jack Nicholson got on the stand and said, "The truth? You can't handle The Truth" only I was being told:

"The soup? You can't handle The Soup."

"That's okay," I repeated. We locked eyes. I sent death beams, death beams that said, "You do not want to know the wrath of Marn-Ra." He finally got it that I was willing to go one on one with the soup, in a cage match if necessary, with only the toughest organism coming out alive.

Fine.

He got the rest of our orders. Some of us were just getting soup, others were getting soup and a meal, some just a meal. He asked us if we wanted it to all come at once and we said sure.

He wrote something on his pad and 20 minutes later began to randomly bring bits of food, totally ignoring our instructions to bring everything at once which meant some of us were eating while others went hungry.

Fine.

The thing about attending a lecture is that you want to talk about what you've heard. My daughter's friends are bright and funny so we lingered in animated conversation. Long after we were done eating, we were still surrounded with the remains of our meal.

Competent waitstaff would have bussed our table, got us to buy at least coffee and perhaps other libations. Competent waitstaff would have done that.

Mr. You Can't Take The Soup seemed oblivious to the mess. When he finally deigned to begin clean-up, his cell phone rang. Rather than letting his phone go to voicemail, he set our dirty dishes back down on the table and disappeared into the men's washroom to take his call.

At that point I began looking around for the cameras because, really, this was a fairly decent restaurant and service like this had to be a prank, right?

Um, no. It was a full ten minutes or so before he reappeared to do our clean-up.

Fine.

I did my own share of waiting on tables when I was working my way through university, so I know full well what tips mean, how they can make the difference between Kraft dinner (the ramen of my day) and, you know, the luxury of actual food that's not Kraft dinner.

Give me excellent service, and I'll leave you 20% of the bill because I know how hard it is to do that, how hard it can be to deal with the public night after night.

Serve me poorly, though, and you won't see more than 5%.

Care to guess what I left Mr. You Can't Take The Soup?

--Marn

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