You know it's a bad day when you need a hacksaw.......

stop fingering my forks....

Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Manuel and I am a control freak. There I've said it. I'm not ashamed to say it but sometimes, just sometimes, I wish I wasn't such a control freak. I'd like to be a guardian of control or an occasional babysitter of control but not a control freak. You have no idea how exact Wikipedia's definition of control freak describes me.

"In some cases, the control freak sees their constant intervention as beneficial or even necessary; this can be caused by feelings of superiority, believing that others are incapable of handling matters properly, or the fear that things will go wrong if they don't attend to every detail. In other cases, they may simply enjoy the feeling of power it gives them so much that they automatically try to gain control of everything around them."

And? What's the problem?

When you add a huge case of OCD to my control freakery you get a real fun guy to work with. I'm so bad now that all my bathroom products are faced off so that the labels all face the same direction like the wine bottles etc behind the bar at work. My curtains must be equidistant on either side from the wall, just like work. My glasses are all stacked in equal rows and my shoes are in a perfect line from Converse to work shoes. It's oh so depressing and time consuming.

It would be so much easier if everybody else shared these obsessions goals with me. Waiter chum number one is nearly there but the new kids are years away from developing a full Obsessive Compulsive Disorder like all true waiting staff have. No really, the laughing never stops. But that's mainly at me rather than with me. I wonder sometimes if a restaurant is the best place for a controlling freak with obsession issues to work. I mean the most satisfying part of the day for me is that final minute before we open when everything is just so symmetrical and perfect. And then the guests arrive and start touching things.

Cunts.

Lets take Sunday for example. All was well in my world. The guests were neat, actually neat not neat like you crazy Americans say, that is to say they weren't spreading themselves over two tables when one would suffice. That shit irks me actually it vexes and irks to the point of distraction. Your coat, bag, children etc have a large enough table to fulfill your dining needs you don't need to involve the immaculately set table beside you. Anyway my restaurant was free from any of that nonsense and it was clam, calm like a Sunday should be but rarely is.

I was in a jolly mood and was acting the convivial host between my regular gig schlepping plates to and fro. I was exchanging pleasantries and laughing gayly with all the nice civilised sorts about this and that and the other. Even the children on table ten were keeping their sticky mitts off table twelves cutlery. This was just lovely, too good to be true but lovely.

And then the door opened.

Taking no notice of my charming welcome and pleased to see you expression a rather brash couple sidestepped me and wandered through the restaurant. Well they tried to. When I finally cornered them they explained that they were looking for the rest of their family who they had arranged to meet at the restaurant. After a quick shufty about we all agreed that they weren't there.

"Well you need to get us a table then", blustered Mr Brash. He seemed annoyed that I didn't have his family.

"Yes sir and how many will there be of you?"

He stared at his wife who stared back at him who then stared at me. It was like the end scene of Reservoir Dogs, you know when everybody is pointing guns at everybody. Soon someone would die, me, obviously.

"Deirdre, Sean, Sam, Bob, Brian, Matilda, Roisin, she bringing her Dave?"

"Aye, her Dave and his kids and wee Dave too and......", continued Mrs Brash counting out family members on her fingers. No wonder she looked so haggard. I stood there wondering when the roll call of names would end. I also wondered how wee was wee Dave but decided that it wasn't really a priority right now.

"Bout 20 of us", says Mr Brash.

"About 20?"

"Aye 20 at most", Confirmed Mrs Brash.

"And you don't have a table reserved, for 20, today, here, in this restaurant, for 20?"

"No do we need to?"

I got shot of them and told them I would have their table ready in about a half hour. I necked an espresso and tried to push the vein in my neck back down. But it wouldn't go down. In fact a half hour later, when the table was ready and looking magnificent, it popped out a little further.

In they strode with babies here and toddlers there and special bags with baby equipment and small boys with PSP's and screaming, oh the screaming. I can still here the wails of wee Dave as his brother beat him for no apparent reason. The men all wreaked of cigarettes and the women of cigarettes and Calvin Klein. Is there anything more annoying than the sanctimonious complaints of an ex-smoker?

"Here..." begins one of the women with a child at her legs "...er's nat enough seats fer us uns."

And she was right there wasn't enough seats for all of em uns. When Mr Brash said there would be about 20 of them he meant to say there would be about 25 of them uns. My bad, apparently, as they took the huff with me as some of them had to sit on a separate table. That's right, my bad. Sake.

At this point I decided waiter chum number three would be doing this table. My marvelous Sunday mojo was in tatters and I deduced that serving this lot wasn't gonna bring it back. Standing, or was it hiding, behind the bar I watched as cutlery hit the floor, each little clang forcing the vein in my neck out a little further. Why bother setting the table and making it pretty when a couple of buckets and trough would have done the job better? The three window blinds were raised and lowered and raised again like it was an Olympic sport and when they had finished with that all three were at different levels. They're mocking me. If there is one thing I really cant cope with it's my window blinds at different levels.

The order was secured and then changed and then sent to the kitchen and then changed again. Children were rushing round the place like it was an outdoor pursuits camp. Up the walls they went and under tables too. The toilets became a water park and other customers were just trivial inconveniences. Funny thing, I didn't sell one dessert after that table arrived. It was as if they had all decided, en masse, that now was a good time to leave and they did. Or at least they tried.

Someone had locked the door. The door to the restaurant, the door through which people enter or in this case leave. The door was locked and we needed a key to get them out. But alas they key would not work as the lock had been bust when said individual had locked it. Mother of all that is holy I was stressed. Three lovely couples were staring at me with, "please get us out of here" eyes whilst I fidgeted and pulled at the door. But the door would not budge. At this point the computer system decided that because it doesn't need a door to exit that it would leave in it's own special way and it did, it crashed. I had lost all control and was drowning mainly in a sea of toddlers and falling cutlery.

I ushered the nice people out the backdoor. It was like saving the Jews from the oncoming Nazis. Yes it is! Now, taking customers out the backdoor of a restaurant is like inviting your mother to read through the history file of your internet, that is to say there is shit in there you don't want them to see. But what was I to do?

Food was served and food hit the floor. Thankfully the restaurant was empty now, obviously as the door was still locked. But after someone, the manager I assume who was running between the office and the front door trying to fix all our problems, secured a hacksaw we managed to get the door open again. As we watched them eat/drop their food we discussed what had happened to the door and wondered how it had become locked. Various reasons were offered and in the end children were blamed. "Not so", responded waiter chum number one who had been on a smoke break (oh how I envied her). One of the dad's had done it. She had over heard him explain to his wife that he had locked the door to stop the kids getting out.

UN-FUCKING-BELIEVABLE.

The children were now through the restaurant like an invading army. I had tried to reason with a few of them and had even tried to coax them back to the "loving" arms of their various mothers. Like they listened. No they would much rather ping cutlery off wee Dave's head. In the end I gave up. I gave up trying to keep the restaurant tidy. I gave up picking food off the floor. I gave trying to push all my elevated veins back under the skin.

You can't control the weather and you can't control a half dozen children if they want to ping your cutlery off their cousins head.......