Serial complainers

- "Yeah, well... and what am I meant to do? I have my child with me, and an hour is a long time actually..."

...is what the woman behind me said to the ticket inspector after he'd informed us all of the delay due to a broken down freight train in front of us. I felt sorry for the bloke, having to walk down the carriage like that, politely retorting to everyone's remarks of frustration which were all cleverly wrapped up in passive aggressive quips about free tea and coffee. What exactly did they expect him to do, go out and give the train a wee push?

This attitude is well known to anyone who's worked in the service industry. The other day at work I had a group of just spiffing old women call me over to their table at the height of the lunchtime rush.

- "'scuse me, sorry, how long do you think the paninis will be? It's just we have to catch a bus in about 20 minutes..."
- "Oh, okay! No bother, I'll go back down and see what I can do!"

I did head down and conjured up four of the most exquisite paninis ever made at the speed of a thousand tigers. I even sacrificed my fingers on the rasping hot oven in the process. I then triumphantly brought their paninis up the stairs, panting, and delivered my goods.

Now that , surely, is service. But it wasn't. You see, service has to work on a reciprocal basis and if you've just endured the equivalent of running across the Sahara to bring these codgers their meat 'n' bread, you'd at least expect a 'thank you' and perhaps a small tip, but what I got was some silent, indifferent faces and a table as barren as my bank account. It was so kind of them to be patient enough for me to have to ask them move their arms a tad so I could put the plates down.

Resigned to having wasted my energy totally, I had to traipse my withered corpse back across the restaurant only to have the next table call me over.

-"'scuse me, we ordered before them..."

It's a vicious cycle, being pleasant.

Oh, and those panini guzzling fuddy-duddies stayed for an hour longer and even had the liberty to order scones. How very dare they...

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