New Year, same chinless freaks.....

I'm not a fan of guests substituting ingredients, not even little ones. It's very annoying and regularly leads to unhappiness. I may have mentioned this before. I suppress my urge to stab guests with my faithful and only true friend, the stabbing fork, with little obvious changes such as sauces or salads. I really quite amenable if you catch me in the right mood.

what have you got if you take the penne away?
eh?
nothing, that's what!

That said, I had to be physically restrained the other evening...

It was a frightfully dull Friday, as they tend to be at this time of year, and all was well. I was amusing myself by seeing how long I could balance a cork on my thumb for. This didn't last for long as I have all the hand to eye coordination of a blind quadriplegic. Waiter Chum Number Three managed it with ease whilst talking at the same time about, "...this one time....and he said...and I was all like no way." Or something like that. Manual dexterity is wasted on the youth.

What tables we had were all in their happy places and required nothing in the way of waiterly assistance, which was a good thing. I was tired and frustrated, mainly by my cork/thumb exertions but also because I had been on all day. I sent Waiter Chum Number Three off on a walk-round of the floor. This was under the guise of checking the tables but mainly because her perfect cork balancing thumb was getting right up my....well it was annoying me. I am so childish it's a wonder people speak to me.

"Your table of two are ready to order", she says.

"I have a table of two?" This was news to me.

"Yeah I seated them 'bout five minutes ago", says she in that perky happy unjaded by life sort of way that only a sixteen year old can.

"Right....", I lifted my slumbering mass off the bar and tossed the cork that had been vexing me into the bin.

Wearing my, "HI I'M HAPPY TO BE YOUR WAITER. AREN'T I JUST LOVELY?" face I reluctantly sauntered my way round to the surprising, to me, table of two.

I opened with, "Hi...", it's the expected greeting "...you folks ready to order?"

"Yes I'll have the ....", standard issue pause as she really doesn't know what she wants "....I'l have the eh...um....er.....no I'll have the sea bass with a mixed salad."

"Beautiful madam, good choice." I cant stop myself from saying shit like that. I do it all the time. As if the guests gives two fiddlers fuck what I think of their choice.

"And sir, what will you have this evening?"

He was a thin, bookish looking sort of chap, the sort that has to lie down in a shower to get wet. He stroked his face were normally most people have a chin but where he had only a bump. He wasn't hideously deformed or anything, I'm not that cruel, he just didn't have a chin. Don't people normally have chins? Anyway he was stroking his, "chin" and studying the menu like he was reading The New England Journal of Medicine's latest study into cures for men with no chins.

"I'll have a Kirk Doulas please"

Okay maybe not.

"Yes...I'll....have...a...", this was like pulling teeth.

You'll have a what?

What will you have?

MMMMM?

A chin? Would you like a chin you chinless twat?

".....I'll have the pasta."

Yippee! The pasta. Ten thousand points for you for making a decision. I know I'm a waiter and I'm meant to wait but sometimes I just don't have the patience. All that contem-fucking-plation for pasta.

"Very good sir, the penne pasta. With bread sir?"

"Yes bread would be nice but no penne."

What's this?

"Scuse me?", I turned sharply with my mouth open in full fly catching mode.

"I'll have the pasta but with no penne", confirms the chinless one.

"No penne?"

"No penne please."

Now one has to be careful not to embarrass guests in situations like these. I mean I don't normally correct people who ask for a bottle of Merlot and pronounce the "t" and that sort of thing. It's not conducive to the getting of good tips. But at the same time this guy wasn't exactly a teenager nor did he have the appearance of your average Joe either.

"Ah eh.....eh sir the penne is the pasta."

"Yes that's right. I'll have the pasta without the penne."

Is he taking the pish here?

"No sorry sir the penne is the pasta. We only have penne on this evening. It's the only pasta we do."

"Yes, that's fine...", says he "...I'll have the pasta but with no penne." And he said the last bit nice and slow so that I would understand what he was saying. Yeah because I'm the idiot here!!

I said it again but this time towards his wife, maybe she was the intellectual wing of the table. Alas this was not the case. I got down on my knees beside the chap and using words with only one syllables in them I explained, again, that the pasta was the sodding penne. Penne? Word had lost all meaning by the time I had finished. So I just gave up.

I was back on my feet and had collected the menus and wiping the sweat from my brow calmly said,

"So that's a sea bass and salad for the lady and a penne pasta with bread with no penne for the gentleman." And off I walked, muttering and rueing the day I decided I wanted to become a waiter.

With a tremendously heavy and somewhat saddened heart I rang the order up without making any substitutions or omissions. Twenty or so minutes later I served one sea bass with salad and a pasta dish resplendent with penne (as it's the fucking pasta) and a side of bread.

"There you go madam your sea bass. And sir, your pasta, minus the penne as requested." And I walked away and died a little more.

The worst bit of the story? He loved it, the skinny chinless freak loved it, penne included. You could say the penne never dropped.......