After my workout at the gym last night, I tried out this little outlet called Mingles.
The primary attraction on the menu was sausages.
I ordered a root beer along with other stuffs.
It tasted flat and short of gas. So when a waiter passed by, I called him. I wasn’t rude. In fact, I think I was very courteous.
When he stopped at the table, I said, “Excuse me. This root beer tasted a little flat, and don’t seem to have enough gas.”
He looked at me with an expression that I didn’t put too much thought on. Because he didn’t respond, I elaborated, “May be your drink machine has run out of gas. The root beer doesn’t have any gas in it. May be you want to get a straw and try for yourself.
He countered, “Our drinks are not served from machines. They are served from cans, opened only when there are orders. So it is not possible for the root beer to have not enough gas.”
A flat root beer is a flat root beer, even if it had come straight from a can. Thinking that I could learn from him what brand to avoid the next time I go to the supermarket, I asked, “Oh. What is the brand of this root beer?”
“Mug”, came the confident reply.
I’d tasted Mug root beer in the past, and it had never tasted that flat before. I turned to look at the serving area, and saw his so called “can”. It was a 1-litre or 1.5-litre bottle, two-third empty, which probably explained the lack of gas.
I didn’t want to make life difficult for anyone, so I left it at that.
I said, “Ok then. Thanks.”
Just seconds later, I saw this waiter saying something to his colleague, and with a smirk on his face, jerked his head in my direction. The other person laughed at what he said and turned to look at my direction.
What I saw made my blood boiled.
I was going to pay almost $30 for a meal, and this waiter for reasons that only he knew, had just mocked me.
Perhaps he thought I was trying to get free top-up. Or he thought I was trying not to pay. Or he was just boasting about how he had gotten away with a lie - calling a plastic bottle a can.
Is this how the people in the service industry should behave ?
Mingles had seen the first and last of me.
