The Lady Guide to Modern Manners: 11 April
Dear Thomas,
What do you think about this cooing style of service that seems to be creeping in? You ask for a glass of water in a restaurant and the waiter says, ‘Of course you can,’ in a strange sing-song manner, all long and drawn out. Honestly, why not go the whole way and tickle the customer under the chin or tug lovingly at the strings of their baby bonnet? Am I being horrible?
Audrey Bainbridge, Sheffield
Dear Audrey,
I know exactly what you mean. But not everyone will. You can find it with nurses or doctor’s receptionists, too. ‘Would you sit over there for me, lovely?’ ‘Can you clench your fist for me, lovely, and I’ll put the needle in?’
The feature in these cases is always the maddening ‘for me’. And it’s the same in the bank: ‘Would you sign in 16 places for me, lovely?’ – so you can get your £8.50 loan at 4,000 per cent interest.
In some hotels and restaurants, even posh places, staff aren’t programmed to say anything other than ‘of course you can’ in this crazy way, as if you were a nervous child at a sleepover and you’d just asked your best friend’s nice mummy for orange squash before bed.
It’s mean to complain because these people think they’re being kind and helpful, and in a way they are. The alternative might be a flat ‘No. Sorry.’ I got such a response just last week at a certain well-known department store when I asked if they could mend my toaster.
But I’m beginning to wonder whether this ever-so-obliging, simpering style of service doesn’t amount to the same thing, in an odd way. You feel patronised and infantilised, and also threatened. Such a barrage of cutesy, sugary charm might be resistible but only the most awful curmudgeon would get stroppy in the face of it. So, as a customer, you are brought into line, put on your best behaviour, which is as it should be. You might even prefer to forgo a scone or an egg sandwich rather than face the grating embarrassment of the deeply lovely service.
It’s the self-conscious and unnatural manner of it that is so off-putting. Why can’t hotel receptionists and the like just be themselves? I reckon there are too many ‘experts’ grooming staff in set ways of behaving with the eventual aim of replacing them with robots.
Or is it that we have lost the art of service? In the 1970s moribund railway hotels were run by equally moribund attendants: ‘Is there any lunch?’ ‘Only cold,’ they would boom, the knell of death. Or: ‘The kitchen’s closed.’ Then came the 1980s, and service was back in, as a branch of entrepreneurship and getting on, which perhaps explains why it’s all so effortful and overdone.
Please send your questions to Thomas.blaikie@lady.co.uk or write to him at The Lady, 39-40 Bedford Street, London WC2E 9ER
Oh! I can’t think how I could have failed to wake up to this complication before now. How right Brenda is, especially with these new ‘natural’ crisps, some of which are brutes and doorsteps, which can score the roof of your mouth as well.
You can’t pick out the small ones because then you might not be taking the one nearest you as you were brought up to do. And you can’t break one of the monsters in half and put the other half back because that’s like licking the jam spoon and returning it.
A crisp-less future stares us in the face. They will have to go. The only hope is to pre-crisp alone in one’s cabin (or bedroom).
What do you think about this cooing style of service that seems to be creeping in? You ask for a glass of water in a restaurant and the waiter says, ‘Of course you can,’ in a strange sing-song manner, all long and drawn out. Honestly, why not go the whole way and tickle the customer under the chin or tug lovingly at the strings of their baby bonnet? Am I being horrible?
Audrey Bainbridge, Sheffield
Dear Audrey,
I know exactly what you mean. But not everyone will. You can find it with nurses or doctor’s receptionists, too. ‘Would you sit over there for me, lovely?’ ‘Can you clench your fist for me, lovely, and I’ll put the needle in?’
The feature in these cases is always the maddening ‘for me’. And it’s the same in the bank: ‘Would you sign in 16 places for me, lovely?’ – so you can get your £8.50 loan at 4,000 per cent interest.
In some hotels and restaurants, even posh places, staff aren’t programmed to say anything other than ‘of course you can’ in this crazy way, as if you were a nervous child at a sleepover and you’d just asked your best friend’s nice mummy for orange squash before bed.
It’s mean to complain because these people think they’re being kind and helpful, and in a way they are. The alternative might be a flat ‘No. Sorry.’ I got such a response just last week at a certain well-known department store when I asked if they could mend my toaster.
But I’m beginning to wonder whether this ever-so-obliging, simpering style of service doesn’t amount to the same thing, in an odd way. You feel patronised and infantilised, and also threatened. Such a barrage of cutesy, sugary charm might be resistible but only the most awful curmudgeon would get stroppy in the face of it. So, as a customer, you are brought into line, put on your best behaviour, which is as it should be. You might even prefer to forgo a scone or an egg sandwich rather than face the grating embarrassment of the deeply lovely service.
It’s the self-conscious and unnatural manner of it that is so off-putting. Why can’t hotel receptionists and the like just be themselves? I reckon there are too many ‘experts’ grooming staff in set ways of behaving with the eventual aim of replacing them with robots.
Or is it that we have lost the art of service? In the 1970s moribund railway hotels were run by equally moribund attendants: ‘Is there any lunch?’ ‘Only cold,’ they would boom, the knell of death. Or: ‘The kitchen’s closed.’ Then came the 1980s, and service was back in, as a branch of entrepreneurship and getting on, which perhaps explains why it’s all so effortful and overdone.
Please send your questions to Thomas.blaikie@lady.co.uk or write to him at The Lady, 39-40 Bedford Street, London WC2E 9ER
WHAT TO DO ABOUT… EATING CRISPS
My regular correspondent, Brenda Robb, writes in some distress: ‘I can cope easily with small crisps, which go in whole, but what about the big ones? If I bite them, I invariably get crumbs down my front and I am sure that if I try to get them in whole I do not present a pretty picture… As I am cruising again later this month, the question of crisps is looming already.’Oh! I can’t think how I could have failed to wake up to this complication before now. How right Brenda is, especially with these new ‘natural’ crisps, some of which are brutes and doorsteps, which can score the roof of your mouth as well.
You can’t pick out the small ones because then you might not be taking the one nearest you as you were brought up to do. And you can’t break one of the monsters in half and put the other half back because that’s like licking the jam spoon and returning it.
A crisp-less future stares us in the face. They will have to go. The only hope is to pre-crisp alone in one’s cabin (or bedroom).