Save The Last Dinner For Me

For me hospitality centres around one thing, people.

The fact that each day brings through new customers, regular customers and over all different customers allows us to interact with the greatest creature on the planet… human beings.

We are tested at times and complimented at others but the exciting part for me is to find the angles, the stories and the characters that are sitting or standing right in front of us.

The meal or the beverage becomes irrelevant when absorbed in somebody’s story or opinion. I love it. I find our elderly customers store a lot of this “gold” and I had a lady recount a wonderful albeit quick story this week.

After making some comments to her and her group about the way people leave their cutlery we all agreed that placing the knife and fork parallel to each other would signal to staff that the meal has been finished or at least the customer has had enough. Plenty of food remaining can send anxiety levels through the roof for even this hardened hospo warrior who awaits a scathing review or blunt feedback. More often, particularly among the elderly, they simply couldn’t fit more in!

Upon discussing the signal that strategically placed cutlery sends out the lady reminisced.

She spoke of a time when she and her husband had attended the renowned Mid City Motel for a divine meal and in that time a night of dancing. Not the electric and synth infused beats of a night spot but the wonderful and graceful ballroom variety.

She chuckled as she recalled nagging her husband to abandon his meal for a short while to have the next dance. The mystery remains whether staff back in the day misread his cutlery signal or he had accidentally placed them parallel. In any case when he returned to finish his well earned grub he was horrified to learn the plate, and his remaining feast, had been whisked away.

Both the lovely lady and I agreed that if faced with the dilemma again……you would have to take the dance over the dinner!