Across the Pond

by Mark Bastable

Did you know that 96% of Americans under the age of forty have at some time or another worked in MacDonald's? I mean, that's a staggering statistic. And rendered no less staggering for knowing that I just made it up.

Still - there's a kind of truth there. One of the very few useful spin-offs of your government's Scroogelike insistence that people should have to work their way through college - as opposed to being paid to go, which was the system that we had until recently - is that educated Americans tend to have some experience of doing menial jobs. And this informs the way in which Americans regard those who wait upon them.

Why does that matter? Well, go to any restaurant in London, and you'll find out. The English are just crap at customer service and, what's worse, crap at being customers, too. The one still-bright ember of our burnt-out class system is the notion that 'to serve' is a synonym of 'to be servile'. We tip badly when we're diners because we think that the waiting staff are lower caste, and we perform badly when we're serving, in order to express our contempt for the bastard who, by some freak of luck, happens to be the one sitting down.

In America - or at least, in my experience of America - table-staff are almost glutinously attentive. The first time I went to a burger-bar in Boston, and the waitress announced herself as 'Darla - your waitperson for this evening', I was so taken aback that I shook her hand and told her that I was Mark, her customer for this evening.

Ask any Brit who's recently returned from Florida what was the biggest culture shock and they'll tell you that they simply couldn't cope with being repeatedly advised to have a nice day. The English see it as fawning and insincere. "I mean, as if the woman at the deli really gives a toss whether I have a nice day or not...."

Me, I quite like it. I'd rather people were insincerely polite to me, than sincerely surly. Though I did have a bit of a problem in New York, when I said thank you to the waitress for bringing the ketchup and she off-handedly said, "Uh-huh." This, I felt, was a dismissiveness I had not come to expect in the Land of the Free Pickle on the Side. My companion assured me that, in New York, 'uh-huh' was the equivalent of gratitude," she said.

So when you visit Great Britain, and you extend towards the staff of the Chez Nicole bistro (the proprieters of which have never been closer to France than owning a Citroen 2CV) the matey bonhomie for which Americans abroad are renowned, do not be surprised when your reward is a sneer and a slapped-down plate of spaghetti which has probably been steeped in lukwarm water since last Tuesday. And don't tip us. We don't deserve it and, more to the point, we'll despise you for being so friendly.

Alternatively, give me a call, and I'll take you to a really nice restaurant I know. The food's great, the service is fine and the atmosphere is not like SingSing on Riot Day.

And it's run by an American, of course.