Why do British customers behave like spoilt babies?
As proven by the recent row over Oxford's admissions policy instigated by the chancellor, class structures in Britain are still prevalent.
The nation's historical memory of certain classes being "in service" continues to cause this generation to confuse genuine service with servitude. And the muddling of the two concepts continues to blight our industry's ability to recruit good middle-class people.
British behaviour
But the issue of class has another effect on our industry, not often acknowledged or talked about, but one that also has an impact on our ability to attract good people. I refer to the way a minority in Britain behave as customers.
Ours is a laddish yob society (Belgium, football - need I say more?) which shows signs of getting worse as our economy continues to boom. The rich get richer and the young nouveau riche element feel even freer to throw their weight and wealth around.
The increasing acceptance of yobbishness by society and the media (just look at any issue of the "new lad" magazines) is a major reason why poor behaviour in restaurants is tolerated.
What do I mean by poor behaviour? I mean that some customers behave like babies.
They are often too loud, too demanding (not the same things as complaining properly when things go wrong - which, by the way, they are equally bad at), they throw food if they are in groups larger than six, they drink too much, they behave condescendingly to their servers, they have sexist tendencies with female staff, they tip poorly, they don't turn up for reservations that they've made, and they don't even have the common courtesy to cancel their reservations.
I know of no other country where the restaurant guest is so poorly behaved.
My own (admittedly small) straw poll of young people leads me to conclude that ill-mannered customer behaviour is a significant deterrent to recruits to our industry.
Personally, I never accepted such behaviour in my restaurants and I don't care if I alienate those customers whose patronage I don't really want. But as long as restaurants tolerate boorish, babyish behaviour, we will find it a struggle to attract good people to work with us.
No matter the short-term cost, we should say "no" to these brats.
Agony and ecstasy
This segues nicely into my next metaphorical thought.
What is it about June and July that seems to produce so many pregnant women? Watching them, it occurs to me that opening a new restaurant is akin to the agony and ecstasy of childbirth. Women may have a monopoly on biological birth, but I notice that very few give birth to restaurants. Possibly, it's because they are too smart to endure more birth pains than are biologically required, and also they probably realise that there are no epidural options for the suffering and pain that restaurant openings inevitably bring.
Restaurant openings can be preceded by either short or protracted periods of labour. Short is better.
Especially painful
I remember one especially painful restaurant debut, where the labour (for which, read "builders") was so bad and long that, to put an end to my suffering, I opted for the equivalent of an emergency Caesarean. With the press launch imminent and irreversible, I threw the blighters off-site well before the restaurant was finished and I opened for business anyway.
I was lucky. After a few frightening months of intensive care, my "baby" grew into an eventual success, but it could just as easily have been stillborn.
That particular birth was pretty scary and nearly put me off doing any more restaurants. Yet, I'm sure that the pleasure of watching our babies grow is what eventually makes us forget the pain endured.
Maybe that's why we restaurateurs (and real mothers) put ourselves through it time after time.
Michael Gottlieb is president of the Restaurant Association and proprietor of Café Spice restaurants and Pencom (Service That Sells) UK
