Reviewing Philip Balantini's film Boiling Point in May, I mentioned that the pressure-cooker atmosphere is created at least in part by the fictional restaurant's "demanding, unappreciative and disrespectful" clientele. Follow a few restauranteurs on Twitter, as I do, and it soon becomes clear that entitled customers are a major contemporary scourge of the catering industry and those who work in it. Faced with such behaviour, there must be an enormous temptation to lose your cool and answer back.
Nevertheless, I can't condone the concept behind Aussie chain Karen's Diner, where serving staff are actually employed to be actively rude to punters. The Guardian sent Helen Pidd to experience the Prestwich restaurant - if only they'd let Jay Rayner loose on it instead.
Of course, this whole idea begs a couple of questions. Presumably employees there are at risk of losing their jobs if they're NOT sufficiently rude? And how many customers complain that the level of service hasn't been insulting enough, thereby flexing their sense of entitlement in the opposite direction?
Either way, a masochistic dining experience isn't for me. Call me vanilla or old-fashioned, but I'd rather be treated courteously by staff whose wages I'm helping to pay.
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