Some people forget that bars and restaurants are places where space is shared with others and where the people who work there provide a service to the public. It is as simple as remembering that as soon as we leave our house, we are no longer in our house, and we are expected to behave accordingly. However, it seems that common sense on the part of customers frequently fails in hospitality establishments. We asked the room staff what are the most disrespectful attitudes they observe on a day-to-day basis and that come to hinder both their work and the experience of other customers.
Toni Merino, director of Colmado Múrria, has observed how since its reopening the room was filled with tourists and curious people who entered the bar only to take some photos. This hundred-year-old establishment, which reopened its doors with bar service in December last year, has preserved a striking modernist-style interior design that, of course, is worthy of admiration and photography, but only for customers who have a drink. “Fed up of seeing how groups of 15 people entered to take photos and leave, bothering the rest of the customers who were enjoying a cava or a Comté, we put a dissuasive sign on the door: ‘5 euros will be charged for each visit that only enters to look’.
“We have no intention of applying the measure, but it seems that the warning has worked and now tourists make a purchase or simply stay at the door. The most surprising thing is that some people enter, see the whole room set up, and not they understand that now we are also a restaurant”, explains Merino. However, there are other attitudes that do not have such an easy solution. The director of Colmado Murria regularly checks how there are customers who want to attract the attention of the room staff with a snap of their fingers or tongue or even clapping and others who make comments of a sexual nature to the local workers.
The same is true of Jota, from the Pony bar. “The finger snapping keeps happening,” he says. In his dive bar, which sells drinks and snacks and is open until dawn, he has experienced all kinds of surreal situations. “This has happened several times: clients, the majority of whom are men between the ages of 30 and 40, have reached for the fruit bowl to pick up and bite into the cucumbers that we use for gin and tonics in an attempt to be funny by establishing a phallic analogy, an attitude that only I can describe as childish”. It seems obvious that neither the ingredients nor the instruments of a bar can be touched, but it happens too many times. “Neither the gherkins, nor the lemons, nor the limes, nor the oranges are touched. If you saw a tray of tripe, you wouldn’t stick your hand in, would you? Well, don’t touch the fruits or the things on the bars.
Jota also experiences obvious lack of education, such as those of customers who, even with his back turned to do some work, consider that they can talk to him and ask for things while his back is turned, or even while he is talking or serving another customer, without waiting for his answer. shift. “If the day is being stressful, these things can end up making it worse.” Rearrange tables, chairs and stools to form a group table, without asking anyone, ignore warnings, divide the drinks of a large group until you want to share the price of a portion of olives or some potato chips and insist incessantly to drink something more after closing time, are other disrespectful attitudes that witness more times than you would like. He points out a last one, in particular, that skips all forms of civilized coexistence: “some clients enter, arrive at the bar without saying anything and the first sentence they utter is to ask for something. They have not greeted you, they have not greeted you, and this is deeply unpleasant. We should just have a little deference for the person who is going to serve you.”
This is precisely one of the things that increasingly annoys Raúl Barroso, from the Las Esparteras restaurant. “Every day I take it worse: that the clients do not greet or do not say good morning, he gets on my nerves. They ask for ‘a table for three’, ‘a sandwich’, ‘where is the service’ and they haven’t even said a ‘hello’. My response is being: ‘good morning’. And they insist: ‘a table for three’. “Sir,” I tell them, “the first thing is good morning and then the table.”
Open 24 hours a day at kilometer 47 of the A5 Extremadura Highway (Casarrubios del Monte, Toledo), at the Las Esparteras restaurant they have seen some attitudes typical of the night. “The worst come after midnight, when some people arrive drunk and are especially rude. They have closed the bars in the surrounding towns and they want to continue drinking. That is why we have made the determination not to serve alcohol after a certain time.”
Although not everything bad happens at night. Some of the most disrespectful situations are those incurred by customers coming from buses that stop at the service area where the restaurant is located. “The driver tells them that they have 20 minutes to eat and they want to get past everyone and be served very quickly, even though they ask for things that need to be done right away. They do not reach the direct insult but they do disqualify: “you have no idea, it is that to be behind a bar you also have to know, it is that more people bring your boss in”, and all this is received by the waiters who They are the ones who show their faces in the room”.
Barroso believes that it is a lack of education that can lead to such inconsiderate behaviour. Among them, in Las Esparteras he has seen how not satisfying the whims of customers made them become more and more rude. “Some clients reserve a table for you and, for some reason, they don’t like the one you’ve assigned them without any kind of malice, either because it’s in the center or it’s not, and you relocate them and they don’t like it either. They end up pointing you to the only table that they seem to like, and that you usually already have reserved for a regular customer. Since you can’t give it to them, from then on the food goes awry and everything is a problem because by not doing what they asked for, they are no longer comfortable and they show it to you”.
At times, due to these lack of restraint, very tense situations can be experienced. “In our restaurant, you can reserve a table or show up without a reservation. If you arrive and we have availability, we will seat you. If we are full, you will have to stand in line. Whoever arrives with a reservation, passes in front of the queue and this is not usually seen well by those who are waiting, who have sometimes caught the attention of the reservation customer, as if he were sneaking in, and we have to deal with resolving the conflict ”.
From the Suru Bar they have watched with astonishment a couple of times how customers have stolen their cutlery. “It’s happened to us a couple of times: once it was a customer and the other time it was the four people at the same table after inquiring about the Perceval knives we have and asking where we bought them. They have also stolen a teaspoon of coffee that they later returned”, explains Gemma López, head of the room and co-owner. “I think there is a part of the morbidity of taking something from the place where you have gone but, without a doubt, there is also a very great lack of empathy and the ignorance of what things cost us. The perception of people who do this is usually linked to not appreciating or valuing gastronomy. We get angry, frustrated and very disappointed when this happens, since this is our house and someone taking our things, which have cost us an effort, hurts”.
For López, it is also inconsiderate to go out to smoke in the middle of a meal and, above all, to do so without warning: “it seems disrespectful to people who are putting every ounce of their time and love into preparing a dish.” On the other hand, he finds it unpleasant that customers do not pay attention to the explanations of the dishes, that they do not say hello when they enter, or that they themselves take the menu when they sit at the bar. “It’s like opening our sock drawers at home.” For some strange reason, some customers come to Suru with their bicycle or scooter, “as if we were a parking lot, assuming that they can do it and that we must keep it for them.”
They also find that customers feel free to move their chairs, for example, if a new person shows up in the middle of dinner. “Without hesitation, they take a chair from another table and when you explain that they can’t do that and you don’t have any more chairs, it seems that it doesn’t suit them.” The room manager has also noticed how classism marks some attitudes: “we are seeing a lot of how some clients treat us before and after knowing that we are the owners. First, we’re ordinary waiters and cooks, but then it seems that we deserve to be at their level because we’re the owners. People can be very cruel and unpleasant.
