How to Deal with Customers Who Talk Too Much

The Talker skips upstairs, chattering at the Australian hostess like a Thompson submachine gun. She pirouettes towards a table, arms flailing everywhere, drops her bag and squeals: “It’s lovely up here. I’m a bit nervous actually, it’s a date, did I tell you? I hope he won’t be long. What do you think of my hair? What about the dress? I got it this afternoon, isn’t it gorgeous?”

“It’s amazing,” the hostess replies, with the little excitement she’s able to muster at the tail end of a long shift. “I’m sure he’ll love it, take a seat and I’ll send a waiter over.”

“Will do,” the Talker says, grinning weirdly with her nose, like a sneezing dog. “Must dash to the loo first, though.”

“Good luck with this one,” warns the hostess. “She talked for ten minutes when she phoned to confirm the booking.” Backing towards the kitchen, the hostess cocks an imaginary shotgun, places both barrels in her mouth and blows her brains all over the wall. This signal happens a lot in the restaurant industry. I’m not worried.

When the Talker returns from the bathroom, I head over and offer her water and an aperitif. She vacillates from tap to sparkling and back again a few times, before settling on tap because she believes it to be “the popular choice”.

This kind of indecision doesn’t really bother me, unless you send back the thing you ordered three times saying I got your order wrong. I’d much rather that than a table of pretentious pricks who eat out with the regularity of Chinatown rats and whose every fourth remark later forms the basis of a derogatory tweet. (Yes, we search for ourselves on Twitter. A lot.)

“Can I get you anything else?” She asks me to recommend something and then spaces out completely while I list a few of my favourites. “Nice ceiling,” she finally replies. I ask if she drinks gin and then find myself studying the ceiling as well. “Oh yes,” she says. “Love gin. Absolutely love the stuff. Super. I’ll have a gin, then.”

“Neat?”

“No, silly!” she says, slapping my wrist, completely failing to answer the question. This is kind of amazing.

I’ve just started to wonder whether she really is meeting anyone when her date arrives. He’s a bit of a disappointment; his shoulders are too far forward, his neck’s bent, his pony tail’s crap and his suit doesn’t fit. His face is so lacking in definition he’s resorted to a beard in lieu of a chin. She evidently couldn’t care less, which is cute. Jumping up, she flings her arms out, begging for an embrace and tries to kiss him hello. He recoils like a shy adolescent, kisses her awkwardly on the cheek and sits down, blushing. She leans in and tells him it’s absolutely wonderful and simply brilliant to make his acquaintance. Honestly, they’re adorable. I’m imagining their awkward kids before he’s even pulled his chair up to the table.

I go over and offer him a drink but he tells me he’s fine with the water. Thirty seconds of chat later, he waves me over: “Vodka. No ice.” The Talker heads to the bathroom again, and he manages to fit two drinks in during her absence.

During their meal, they seem to genuinely hit it off. I guess the endless vodka is working its magic, because suddenly they’re nodding their heads, squawking at one another like a pair of giddy sparrows and taking regular tours of the toilets. When they return, with dinner clearly over, she raises her hand in the air and gives me the bill signal.

My colleague Esther and I discuss the inevitable shagging at the till (we do this a lot, sorry). We imagine her lying in her pink bedroom, hands by her sides, stiff as a board, thanking him ecstatically for every nervous thrust. Think Brittany Murphy in Girl, Interrupted, but with less disgusting chicken and more blusher. Shit, she did order chicken actually. Should I be worried?

Over-politeness like The Woman’s is something we encounter regularly. People’s insecurities lead them to imagine that waitering must be a terrible thing to do. How horrible it must be they think, to be perpetually degraded by all those horrible people you serve. This misplaced pity makes their effusive thanks and incessant politeness somehow genuinely belittling. Waitering is actually a fascinating thing to do. The repetitive mechanics of it is balanced by the intimate, voyeuristic view of people’s lives it affords you.

I stand at the back of the restaurant observing my zoo, wondering if drugs are really all that bad when they have the capacity to lead two such totally inept people to each other.

Follow Max on Twitter: @lunchluncheon

Previously – What Really Goes On in a Restaurant Kitchen