I’D like to pay my respects to another job which seems threatened to go the way of the Dodo; the waiter.
The man in the starched white pinny (I know we have waitresses but they tend to be more helpful than waiters so aren’t as an effective counterpoint for the rest of this piece!).
The man who can tell you the special is off. The man who pulls a strange, pained face when you order the wrong wine with your egg and chips.
Apparently a new mobile phone app has been developed which lets you order your food direct from your phone at your table and lets you pay for it via the same method.
No more feeling pressured by not knowing what you want.
No more blurting out ‘I’ll have the beef’ when you’ve no idea what you want. In a vegetarian restaurant.
No more trying to catch his eye as he glides smoothly across the floor of the restaurant towards a more affluent-looking diner.
But waiters do more than wait.
They deliver the food to your table. Who’s going to be doing that.
I don’t want my soup flung all over me by a monkey butler in a dinner suit.
The same simian would be no help if there was a fly in said starter either.
He’d probably go bananas (some pun intended) before clambering up a pot plant and beginning to swing from a light fitting.
Don’t even start me on paying.
How do you catch the eye of an errant monkey and make that ‘I’d like the bill sign’?
