I'm gonna get HAMmered today....

In order to give guests the best possible service during the party season we ask them to order their chosen meals in advance. It's the only way to get them in and out in two hours best attend to their every whim-cum-eccentricity and it's a system that has served us well for many a year. But now that pork has gone and got it's beautiful self all sullied and violated with the contents of the household waste of the good people of County Carlow I fear that our pre-order system is about to crash harder than Pete Doherty on a Monday morning after a weekend bender.

I miss you so so much

The phone, fax and email systems will be jammed with twitchy diners trying to change from turkey and ham to salmon or the, previously mad cow, steak or something else free from dioxins. And who will be on the other end trying to deal with this panic? That's right, waiter chum number one. Suppose I'll have to help. The problem being that our Christmas reservations book and pre-order folder is a very delicate ecosystem much like the Amazon. And much like the Amazon the less people crawling all over it the better. Once the order has been received we have to mark it off and note it on various other sheets, highlighter pens are deployed and strange codes are used to notify everyone that the order has been got. Now, to have to undo all that because the news is kicking up a storm about some teeny tiny risk is a massive pain in the ass.

But undo it we will. Not just anybody can do it, in fact very few, that is to say two of us, can do it. Others try and fail and fuck the aforementioned delicate ecosystem up. Their piss poor attempts at recreating our mythical codes and shorthand is the equivalent of bringing a flu sufferer to the Amazon - that is to say it causes chaos!! Chaos, I tell you with no hint of hyperbole. Some have suggested we have made it all too complicated. Others say we are full of shit. Most say we are full of our own self importance and are just keeping ourselves in jobs. But they don't know the ways of the booking system and more importantly the ways of the guest with their special dietary requirements and attempts at ludicrous substitutions.

I had one chap, last week, email me and ask for extra soup in his bowl and extra turkey with his eh turkey. Both were denied. Another didn't want pudding so he asked for an Irish coffee. Oh wouldn't it be great to live in a world were xmas pudding could be swapped for Irish coffee? But we don't. His request was also denied. This isn't a school playground were kids swap new shoes for a bag of Space Raider crisps. And what of the chap who was allergic to egg but still wanted his chicken breaded? We had to tell him to catch a fucking grip, politely, but still we had to do it.

You see these details were spotted not by the managers, who pass the emails to us, but by us. They would be happy to file it and say nothing. But we, waiters, are the guardians of the ordering/booking system, we are the ones who say, "no". We don't like having to say, "no" (actually that's not true, I love saying no) but we have to do it, for the good of the restaurant, for the good of society as a whole. I'm gonna get a little hat and a uniform to go with my new Mussolini-esque attitude.

Tuesday is going to be a wonderful day, I can feel it. And if any one of the twitcher switchers is a smoker I'll personally stuff a pigs head up their butt and then mark them all over with my highlighter pen.

Seriously.