I am having dinner in an upmarket restaurant with my wife and her sister. This is my third time here and as with previous visits I notice that our bottle of water is never left on the table. The waiter pours and then retreats, bottle in hand. I’m not quite sure what they expect us to find so offensive about leaving it on the table but then I realise that this is their idea of “personalized service”. This is their way of saying “we don’t want you to stress yourself out staring at the bottle knowing that you will have to pour your own water, probably spraining your dainty wrist in the process…..and don’t fret, you won’t be left sitting there parched, waiting for a top up: after all, personalized service means we will keep an eye on you”. The meaning of this becomes apparent very quickly.
“They’re watching me” my wife remarks, with her eyes still fixed on the plate of food she is eating. I realize that she is not suffering an episode of acute paranoia: she is referring to the two or three wait-staff who have taken up standing positions no more than six feet away from our table.
Each of three courses is accompanied with the same set of tropes: the dish is served and, about twenty-five seconds later, the waiter steps forward to ask how the food is. A further forty-five seconds or so will pass before a be-suited man (suit = management position I guess) arrives to ask the same question, presumably in case there was a massive error of judgment with the first mouthful and the second mouthful has led to a fulsome reassessment of the meal.
But they don’t seem to register our words, they’re just going through the motions. They smile, nod and retreat before we’ve even responded properly. If I were to reply, nodding with a smile of my own, that “this is without any shred of doubt the most hideous plate of food I have ever had the misfortune to have been served, a plate that is culinary evil incarnate and would require an exorcist rather than a waiter to clear it from the table, a plate so thoroughly misguided that it’s at risk of being adopted as the mascot for a local doomsday cult”, the questioner would have already smiled, nodded and retreated before I finished the first few words.
Personalized serviced also comes to mean the removal of plates we (appear to) have finished eating from with the speed usually associated with a Shinkansen bullet train, one that’s trying to make up time for a delayed departure. In fact, it’s at this point that the line between “attentive” and “obtrusive” is well and truly carved up.
Having claimed the last piece of fish from the serving plate and barely relocated it to my own, a hand swoops down to swipe the serving plate before I’ve even retrieved the last of the sauce and vegetables from it.
“Hang on” I say to the waiter, in a way that is somehow calm and irritated at the same time, and he magnanimously allows me to clumsily scrape up a few more spoons from the serving plate, whilst his hand hovers in mid-air next to it.
In the dimly lit space, plates disappear as soon as our heads are turned, like backpackers walking single file through the woods at night in a horror movie being picked off one by one by an unseen foe. “Hmmm wasn’t there a…..didn’t we just have a…..I’m sure we hadn’t finished the….hmmm, maybe we had”.
Each time there is a pause in eating we gently clasp our plates so we can feel if the waiter tries to pick-pocket our table.
It could be that the restaurant has been recently diagnosed with Chronic Crockery Deficiency and the arrival of each emptied dish in the kitchen is met with a spontaneous outpouring of joy from the kitchen staff who group hug and wipe tears of relief from each other’s eyes with dishcloths as they celebrate the return of each plate like the homecoming of a prodigal child.
At the end of the meal, the waitress (I say the waitress because she took our order, but in fact several different staff have been involved in serving and clearing each course) enthusiastically hands us a business card with her name scribbled on it and requests a write-up on Trip Advisor.
It all now seems so calculated and rehearsed. I can guess what type of review they hope I’ll write:
“AMAZING service! Denise was superb, so attentive! And so were the other four waiters and two managers assigned to our table! On my first mouthful, there was barely time for the electrical impulse to pass from the papillae on my tongue to the primary gustatory cortex before they checked in to see how the food was! Bravo! And not to mention this restaurant is leading the way among fine-dining establishments in tackling head-on the scourge of mindless over-eating – our plates were cleared before they were completely empty! Thank goodness, as I usually succumb to licking the sauce off them if they’re left on the table for longer than absolutely necessary – phew! 10/10. I will be back!”
But I don’t blame the staff themselves. In my mind’s eye I see the induction they’ve sat through, drilled by an exuberant Service Tsar parachuted in from Head Office: “Remember! There are over 112 million restaurants in this part of the city alone and therefore We. Need. To. Stand. Out. and one simple way we can do that is to show how much we care for the patrons who have decided to give us their custom over those other restaurants. Now, let me give you a classic example: have you ever stopped to think about what kind of message it gives to a customer when you just leave a bottle of water on their table?……”.