I like working with young people. They've got their whole lives ahead of them, which means they're looking forward. They're not old enough to have ballsed everything up yet, which makes them fun to be around. They don't have very much money, and the little bit they do have, they want to spend on brightly coloured drinks and takeaways, but that's up to them.
I much prefer working with young people to working with old people. One of the problems of working with old people is that they're looking back on everything, and to quote Inception, they are often 'full of regret, waiting to die'. They just want to talk about how much their shares have gone down, or what scan they've just been for, or whether they'll die before or after their savings run out.
I presently find myself in that middle ground. I'm not really young, but I'm not really old. I don't have much money, but what I do have I've learned not to waste on coloured drinks, and although I've been for a few scans, I'm still relatively mobile, and so I haven't booked a place in the old people's home yet.
Last night I went out for a meal with lots of young people. I had no choice. There's only young people where I work. In fact, 11 out of the 12 people at the meal were born after I left school, some of them were born after I got married. It was three of the young people's birthdays, and their combined age is 68. That's younger than my mum. Considerate of them to cluster their birthdays together, so as to save money on having to go out multiple times.
It's the fourth time I've been out for a meal with them. Two of the other three times were after I'd just been fired. This time I only had a headache. The first time was at the Copper Beech. Massive portions of easily recognisable food at very reasonable prices. The second time was at Cafe 85, where the food was delivered in little piles in the middle of satellite dishes after being constructed from food meccano out the back. I wrote about that one here.
Last night was sort of a happy medium between the two. It was at Al Forno's. The food was slightly more expensive that the Copper Beech, and the drinks prices were astronomical, but the portions were big and the food prices were quite reasonable. The meals also got delivered on plates approximately the same size as the food, which I always like. I don't want to have to crawl into the middle of a plate big enough to pick up noise from the Big Bang just to go searching for the little bit of food that's in there.
Then again, I don't like the other extreme. I don't like getting food squashed into a too small polystyrene container. This is why I never order the special at work. Whatever the special is, it's piled into a burger box in layers of the staff's choosing, and then you have to dig down in the style of a Chilean miner to get to the rest. Usually with hot dinners I like to leave the best bits till last, but you can't if you veg is buried 3 feet below your steak. Surely bigger sizes of polystyrene container are available?
Anyway, back to last night. It was to celebrate Corinne, Natalie and Pete's birthdays (all very young and attractive, all with very good skin, at least one of them goes in for dermo-abrasion even though I have no idea what that is and they probably don't need it, as there's not a wrinkle in sight). The table we were sat on was a lot like the picnic benches at work, but with more cutlery and less Yorkie pushers going past.
Although the food was easy to recognise, it had Italian names. Thankfully we had brought the list, so we knew what we'd ordered. I had Pollo Goujons followed by Pizza Piccante. This is apparently foreign-speak for chicken nuggets and pepperoni pizza. It was all very nice, but they must have run out of nugget sized bits of chicken in the kitchen because I got two giant ones instead that were more like chicken kievs. Rob had a full plate of garlic bread and other people around me had ordered giant plates of potato shavings, which meant I had my own and some of other people's. It was just as well I had 3 starters because the main course was a long time coming. At least mine was.
The whole thing had been pre-ordered but the Andy Finn had to throw a spanner in the works by turning up late and ordering something extra on top. As fate would have it, he'd ordered the same thing as me.
I hate that thing where most people have got their meals, but no-one wants to start until everyone has got theirs. It's worse if the missing dish is yours. That way, you can't eat because you haven't got anything, and the rest are watching the heat drain out of theirs while they're waiting for you.
At Alforno's they must have a special team of people who they send out to apologise to you if anything goes wrong. I've never been apologised to, by so many people in such a short space of time in my life. And it really wasn't necessary. I only had to wait about 5 minutes, but every 10 seconds or so they were launching somebody new out of the kitchen to apologise. It was unreal. They probably should have had a team meeting beforehand and agreed on the reason for the delay, but they were all just winging it.
The first guy said it was 10 seconds away, but that it was overdone, it had been in the oven too long, so if I wanted I could send it back. You should have brought it first instead of last, I suggested, I've not worked in a restaurant, but I've got an oven, I know that much. The 10 seconds came and went and no pizza, and I was starting to get anxious. How overdone was it going to be, and how bad would it have to be for me to send it back? By this point I was hoping it was going to be a tiny charred black disc, so that it would be obviously inedible, as I hate having to return stuff.
Anyway, as the staff continued on their sponsored excusathon, the reasons for the lateness kept changing, until eventually they came out and pointed at Andy Finn, and blamed him for ordering the same thing. They tried to make a case for only being able to get one pizza in the oven at once, and Andy had taken my spot, but as at least another 5 people on the table had pizzas, I think it's more likely that they just made what was on our original list, and somehow Andy's order had got lost, but he'd got mine.
I didn't actually mind any of this. Because I really liked the restaurant, and I really liked the food, and the company and there was a nice atmosphere, and although the drinks were expensive, they are everywhere.
By the time my pizza came, it was so hot, I didn't know whether to eat it or use it as a sunbed. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if the same can be said for the others. But if they want to let their food go cold out of social politeness, that's up to them.
One of the things about crowded restaurants and long tables is that you can't always hear what other people are saying, but you can hear the odd word, so you just chip in when you can. For some reason Pete had come dressed as Mr Sulu from the original Star Trek, and he seemed to be very interested in talking about different types of butter. Apparently if you have too much of it, you can go numb. Have you tried Lurpak spreadable I suggested, it's usually on offer from Tesco? I've often eaten multiple slices of toast with that stuff on, and I've never had a numb face afterwards. He didn't seem interested in my knowledge of supermarket deals and he just carried on talking.
Another conversation was about how dangerous it can be to get amateurs to rip strips of wax off your undercarriage. After listening to that one, the chances of me getting wax removed from my delicate downstairs areas went up from a long shot 1000 to 1, to a mathematically almost non-existent 15 billion to one. I'll keep the hair thanks. As far as I know, no-one ever ended up in A&E just from having hair, so I'd like to keep it that way.
Despite the expensive drinks, and the huge variety of apologies I got in an Italian accent, the restaurant was actually really good, and I would definitely go there again. The only down side was that I felt a bit crappy as I'd had head and neck ache all afternoon. The good news is after dosing up on painkillers, and putting a heat pack on my neck I feel a lot better this morning. But aches and pains are just part of getting old I suppose.
The good news is that unlike last time I went out for a meal with the same young people, I haven't been fired this week. So there may well be more birthday meals to come.
I much prefer working with young people to working with old people. One of the problems of working with old people is that they're looking back on everything, and to quote Inception, they are often 'full of regret, waiting to die'. They just want to talk about how much their shares have gone down, or what scan they've just been for, or whether they'll die before or after their savings run out.
I presently find myself in that middle ground. I'm not really young, but I'm not really old. I don't have much money, but what I do have I've learned not to waste on coloured drinks, and although I've been for a few scans, I'm still relatively mobile, and so I haven't booked a place in the old people's home yet.
Last night I went out for a meal with lots of young people. I had no choice. There's only young people where I work. In fact, 11 out of the 12 people at the meal were born after I left school, some of them were born after I got married. It was three of the young people's birthdays, and their combined age is 68. That's younger than my mum. Considerate of them to cluster their birthdays together, so as to save money on having to go out multiple times.
It's the fourth time I've been out for a meal with them. Two of the other three times were after I'd just been fired. This time I only had a headache. The first time was at the Copper Beech. Massive portions of easily recognisable food at very reasonable prices. The second time was at Cafe 85, where the food was delivered in little piles in the middle of satellite dishes after being constructed from food meccano out the back. I wrote about that one here.
Last night was sort of a happy medium between the two. It was at Al Forno's. The food was slightly more expensive that the Copper Beech, and the drinks prices were astronomical, but the portions were big and the food prices were quite reasonable. The meals also got delivered on plates approximately the same size as the food, which I always like. I don't want to have to crawl into the middle of a plate big enough to pick up noise from the Big Bang just to go searching for the little bit of food that's in there.
Then again, I don't like the other extreme. I don't like getting food squashed into a too small polystyrene container. This is why I never order the special at work. Whatever the special is, it's piled into a burger box in layers of the staff's choosing, and then you have to dig down in the style of a Chilean miner to get to the rest. Usually with hot dinners I like to leave the best bits till last, but you can't if you veg is buried 3 feet below your steak. Surely bigger sizes of polystyrene container are available?
Anyway, back to last night. It was to celebrate Corinne, Natalie and Pete's birthdays (all very young and attractive, all with very good skin, at least one of them goes in for dermo-abrasion even though I have no idea what that is and they probably don't need it, as there's not a wrinkle in sight). The table we were sat on was a lot like the picnic benches at work, but with more cutlery and less Yorkie pushers going past.
Although the food was easy to recognise, it had Italian names. Thankfully we had brought the list, so we knew what we'd ordered. I had Pollo Goujons followed by Pizza Piccante. This is apparently foreign-speak for chicken nuggets and pepperoni pizza. It was all very nice, but they must have run out of nugget sized bits of chicken in the kitchen because I got two giant ones instead that were more like chicken kievs. Rob had a full plate of garlic bread and other people around me had ordered giant plates of potato shavings, which meant I had my own and some of other people's. It was just as well I had 3 starters because the main course was a long time coming. At least mine was.
The whole thing had been pre-ordered but the Andy Finn had to throw a spanner in the works by turning up late and ordering something extra on top. As fate would have it, he'd ordered the same thing as me.
I hate that thing where most people have got their meals, but no-one wants to start until everyone has got theirs. It's worse if the missing dish is yours. That way, you can't eat because you haven't got anything, and the rest are watching the heat drain out of theirs while they're waiting for you.
At Alforno's they must have a special team of people who they send out to apologise to you if anything goes wrong. I've never been apologised to, by so many people in such a short space of time in my life. And it really wasn't necessary. I only had to wait about 5 minutes, but every 10 seconds or so they were launching somebody new out of the kitchen to apologise. It was unreal. They probably should have had a team meeting beforehand and agreed on the reason for the delay, but they were all just winging it.
The first guy said it was 10 seconds away, but that it was overdone, it had been in the oven too long, so if I wanted I could send it back. You should have brought it first instead of last, I suggested, I've not worked in a restaurant, but I've got an oven, I know that much. The 10 seconds came and went and no pizza, and I was starting to get anxious. How overdone was it going to be, and how bad would it have to be for me to send it back? By this point I was hoping it was going to be a tiny charred black disc, so that it would be obviously inedible, as I hate having to return stuff.
Anyway, as the staff continued on their sponsored excusathon, the reasons for the lateness kept changing, until eventually they came out and pointed at Andy Finn, and blamed him for ordering the same thing. They tried to make a case for only being able to get one pizza in the oven at once, and Andy had taken my spot, but as at least another 5 people on the table had pizzas, I think it's more likely that they just made what was on our original list, and somehow Andy's order had got lost, but he'd got mine.
I didn't actually mind any of this. Because I really liked the restaurant, and I really liked the food, and the company and there was a nice atmosphere, and although the drinks were expensive, they are everywhere.
By the time my pizza came, it was so hot, I didn't know whether to eat it or use it as a sunbed. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if the same can be said for the others. But if they want to let their food go cold out of social politeness, that's up to them.
One of the things about crowded restaurants and long tables is that you can't always hear what other people are saying, but you can hear the odd word, so you just chip in when you can. For some reason Pete had come dressed as Mr Sulu from the original Star Trek, and he seemed to be very interested in talking about different types of butter. Apparently if you have too much of it, you can go numb. Have you tried Lurpak spreadable I suggested, it's usually on offer from Tesco? I've often eaten multiple slices of toast with that stuff on, and I've never had a numb face afterwards. He didn't seem interested in my knowledge of supermarket deals and he just carried on talking.
Another conversation was about how dangerous it can be to get amateurs to rip strips of wax off your undercarriage. After listening to that one, the chances of me getting wax removed from my delicate downstairs areas went up from a long shot 1000 to 1, to a mathematically almost non-existent 15 billion to one. I'll keep the hair thanks. As far as I know, no-one ever ended up in A&E just from having hair, so I'd like to keep it that way.
Despite the expensive drinks, and the huge variety of apologies I got in an Italian accent, the restaurant was actually really good, and I would definitely go there again. The only down side was that I felt a bit crappy as I'd had head and neck ache all afternoon. The good news is after dosing up on painkillers, and putting a heat pack on my neck I feel a lot better this morning. But aches and pains are just part of getting old I suppose.
The good news is that unlike last time I went out for a meal with the same young people, I haven't been fired this week. So there may well be more birthday meals to come.
