Yet another customer barred on Friday, a regular asshole, pleasant enough to me, but I'm not the only one that works there.
A certain famous - in a Calgary sort of way - individual, who's son has done well in Politics. He works for the city, or some such.
According the Nephew and other sources he's been barred from quite a few other restaurants in the city. He knows this, in his year and a half here he's gotten quite well connected.
The reason is that he's had the audacity to complain about his steak, it's overdone, he's right but G "bought" him a half litre of wine in compensation and offered to replace it.
The steak and wine sufficed, he seemed (as it were) happy enough.
He's in with his secretary, attractive, 30-something, shapely, the female staff have informed me that they're having an affair, me, I have trouble ascribing it, the customer in question is perhaps 55, 60, short, in feature and manner a toad.
Still, who am I to comment? Stranger things have happened. At lunch they hammer the wine, in the evening when he brings his wife and other guests they are quiet, drink only water. He, like so many others, has a very apparent double life. I don't comment.
He complains after lunch about being charged for his steak (overdone, it's true) and the charge for the substitution on his side dish of Pasta.
I don't argue, am not generally the argumentative type, I have a suspicion how this will pan out but just deduct it from the bill. G dealt with him, G's gone home, I don't need the hassle.
When G comes in for the night shift I tell him, the owner's near and goes off his nut, never particularly liked this customer (none of the staff did either), more grievances, who does he think he is? And he has me compose a letter on the computer, Mr. So and SO is no longer welcome here, he's been barred.
It's happened before.
Now again. We bar people with disconcerting regularity, relying on staff to remember who's been barred and who hasn't, the owner, he doesn't forget. Usually we're so thrilled to see the end of these ass-holes we remember.
The thing about being barred from this restaurant, as opposed to any other restaurant (and I can't help wondering how failed your life must be to be barred from here, let alone another restaurant....to think some people are regular at this?!!!) is that so many of our regular customers know one another that in a way, peculiar and obtuse that you will understand or not, you've been barred from society.
Almost all of our regular customers know one another.
How, then, to explain that you can't join a friend or wife for lunch at a favorite dining spot? DO you just say you're not hungry, on a diet, do you state that you've had a disagreement with the owner (as with so many other local owners/proprietors)? Do they feel any sort of shame and embarrassment? As far as I'm concerned he wasn't the worst customer by far, the competition for that place is vigorous and ongoing, but this customer had the audacity to complain about 2 things on the bill, and that was socially the end of him.
We don't so badly need the business. He's been barred.