Allow me, please, to paint you a picture of beauty and serenity.
A small middle-class town – one I won’t name – on a typical British summer bank-holiday weekend. By which I mean in the past 24 hours there had been a genuine risk of death by hailstone.
Lunchtime. Crisp air had worn holes in our stomachs, and in among the cobbles and chip shops and delis, and abandoned, turned-up Fairtrade organic ice-cream cones, I led my small family towards something I’d spotted through the thin drizzle.
A tiny diner.
A freshly painted beacon of hope in muted, middle-class tones.
‘Let’s get a hotdog!’ said my five-year-old son, which is not unusual for him.
‘Yeah! Let’s get a hotdog!’ I replied, which is not unusual for me.
So I made an important decision. This would be where the family had lunch. This would be where we’d buy hotdogs.
This would be a mistake.
‘You have to pay up front,’ said the woman behind the counter, hands on hips, barely looking at me, already somehow aggrieved.
She was in the midst of middle age and wearing her hair in a bun, over heavy eyeshadow and two carefully painted pursed red lips.
I looked at the price of our hotdogs. They were expensive. But we were hungry and already here and I did as I was told and paid up front, even though you don’t pay for food up front.
There were no seats, and no ideas were offered, so we took a table outside and waited in the wind.
‘This weather is wonderfully bracing!’ said my son, though he phrased it ‘I’m cold.’
I reassured him we’d have our hotdogs soon. I’d had hotdogs before. Hotdogs take no time.
Through the window, bored, listless families stared past each other. A kid toyed with his phone. His mum made him put it away but, when he did, she didn’t speak to him.
I noticed none of them had any food.
‘None of those people have any food,’ I mumbled, as grey clouds seemed to gather above me.
The woman in the eyeshadow at the counter had disappeared.
Twenty-five minutes passed.
‘Just wondering about my son’s hotdog!’ I said, walking cheerfully inside when I spotted the woman was back.
She scowled.
Then she put both hands on the counter, and leaned closer, and it got worse.
‘There are TWO OTHER TABLES AHEAD OF YOU,’ she barked, eyes cold. ‘And we COOK TO ORDER.’
This was not the response I was expecting.
‘Cool!’ I said, surprised at the volume of her response and the approach, and I rushed back outside, to my wife.
‘So there are two other tables ahead of us,’ I told her, as she rearranged our baby to prevent frostbite. ‘And the thing is, they cook to order.’
‘What does that mean?’ she said. ‘Maybe it means we should go somewhere else.’
She was right.
But wait.
‘I had to pay up front!’ I remembered. ‘It was like taking out a second mortgage.’
Why had this woman made us pay for our food before we had our food? She had trapped us!
‘Maybe I’ll go in and ask,’ said my wife.
‘No!’ I said, because I’m the dad, and I’d already started this.
The woman bristled as she sensed my tiptoeing. She did not look up, preferring instead to try and burn a hole in her order book through wilful staring alone.
‘Hi, uh, it’s just that if we could get a rough estimate on time,’ I tried, trying not to wake the beast, ‘it would really help us.’
‘TEN MINUTES!’ she yelled, throwing her book down. ‘You’ll have EVERYTHING in TEN MINUTES!’
It was like instead of my polite and staggered sentences she thought I’d kicked the door in, taken my trousers down, and yelled ‘Hey dickhead! Cook me a sausage!’
Behind her, a silent woman joylessly shunted meat round a grill. She looked like one big sigh.
‘So should I wait …’
‘YES,’ she said, indicating the door.
Back outside, I clapped my hands together and pretended everything was absolutely fantastic.
‘Perfect!’ I said. ‘Everything in ten minutes!’
My son looked at me like I’d just said I enjoy stamping on badgers. Ten minutes is six weeks in kid years.
I scrabbled about in my pocket for something for him to play with. I gave him an old train ticket. He looked at it and handed it back.
Twenty minutes later and still nothing had happened.
Nothing.
Well, a seagull briefly landed on a bin, but that’s not the same as getting a hotdog.
‘We’ll soon be approaching an hour!’ I said in disbelief, but trying to remain positive, because I really didn’t want to go back in again.
And then – a miracle!
A teenage waitress silently walked out with a plate.
‘Hi,’ I tried, but word had obviously spread. The girl did not even look me in the eye. I was obviously a troublemaker.
She dropped the plate to the table and on it sat a tiny, overcooked, junior hotdog.
It looked embarrassed to be there.
Next to it were two wet leaves and a single cherry tomato.
‘Oh God,’ I thought, heart sinking. ‘I’m going to have to complain.’
Inside, diners looked at us, sadly.
I glanced down and saw my son had eaten half his hotdog already. Maybe this would all be over soon.
‘So where’s our food?’ asked my wife.
‘Oh God,’ I thought again.
I reasoned that I needed a human shield so took my son with me for protection. But the very second I opened the door and activated its tinkle – a tinkle that had long since lost all sense of joy – the woman began physically to seethe.
In a cartoon, she’d have had steam coming out of her ears.
Somehow, by asking where a hotdog I’d already bought was, I had become the country’s most difficult customer. I would not have been surprised to have turned on my television that night to see this woman being interviewed about me.
‘You don’t understand how it works,’ she barked as I got nearer, voice rising, already incandescent at my cheek. ‘We COOK everything TO ORDER.’
My son took a step back.
It was time for me to take a step forward.
‘Look, we’ve been outside for an hour,’ I said, trying to sound firm. ‘I’m just asking for updates.’
‘You’ve been outside TWENTY MINUTES,’ she said. ‘I know because I checked.’
She made a ‘Ha!’ face.
The whole place fell silent.
I’ve seen the films; this was becoming a stand-off.
‘It’s been a lot longer than twenty minutes,’ I said, gaining confidence. Part of me could feel the room on my side. Enough for me to try raising my voice. ‘It’s been an HOUR!’
She closed her eyes, revealing acres more eyeshadow.
‘It has not been an HOUR,’ she said, opening them again, knuckles whitening against the counter’s edge, ‘and YOU DON’T KNOW HOW IT WORKS!’
‘I DO know how it works!’
‘WE COOK EVERYTHING TO ORDER!’
‘Why do you keep SAYING THAT?’ I yelled, throwing my hands up in the air. ‘Well done on cooking to order! JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER RESTAURANT IN THE WORLD!’
My son was staring up at me now; not her.
‘Do you think I’ve never ordered something and then they COOKED IT? I’ve done that almost everywhere. It’s NOT AS IMPRESSIVE AS YOU THINK!’
‘You’ve been here twenty minutes,’ she hissed again, ignoring my exceptional point, but everyone here knew this was a lie. The brilliance of it, though, was that it was impossible to prove I’d been there an hour.
But wait!
‘My receipt!’ I said, and I pulled it from my pocket and held it aloft, like Sherlock Holmes producing the crucial evidence at the last possible second. She made me pay up front! Hoisted with her own petard!
‘According to this I’ve been here one hour and one minute!’
I’m a genius!
‘And one hour and one minute,’ I added confidently, ‘is too long to wait for a hotdog!’fn1
The woman let out a bitter laugh. She was beaten, she knew it, but there was time for one parting shot, as she scowled and pointed at my wife and baby shivering outside and said, ‘You’re probably the sort of people who queue up for 40 minutes for FISH AND CHIPS.’
Now, to this day I have absolutely no idea what that meant, but let me tell you, it sounded very insulting.
‘Right!’ I said, deciding to regain control, my mind now sharpened and the way forward clear in my head. ‘Cancel it! I want to cancel my order!’
Ha!
‘You can’t!’ she spat.
‘I can!’ I said. Consumer rights! ‘I want a refund!’
‘You can’t have one,’ she smirked. ‘Because your cheeseburger is ready.’
I DIDN’T ORDER A CHEESEBURGER!
Oh, hang on, my wife did.
The woman prodded a cheeseburger towards me with one long nail. It was in a little plastic basket. But the woman’s face said it all: she thought she had won. Around us, people stared, watching the spectacle, enjoying the power struggle, but none yet willing to lend a hand.
‘Well, I’ll pay for the cheeseburger and my son’s hotdog, then,’ I countered. ‘But I want a refund on my hotdog.’
And then something happened.
It was like something exploded behind her eyes.
Her shoulders quivered, and she shook her head, and she did the unbelievable.
She looked at me and said, ‘Actually, do you know what? You can’t have it.’
She dragged the cheeseburger back towards her.
She was keeping the cheeseburger!
‘I WANT YOU OUT!’ she yelled.
‘You want me out?’
‘I’m not doing this,’ she said, hands on hips, head shaking. ‘You can’t have your hotdog!’
‘But I’ve paid for that hotdog!’
‘No. I’m not having this. OUT.’
What the …? I – a man who tries to be polite, a bewildered man, a man who just wondered where his hotdog was – was being thrown out of a diner!
With no hotdog!
In front of my son!
I watched in disbelief as she furiously tossed coins onto the counter instead of hotdogs. And as I scrabbled to pick up the price of a refunded reconstituted sausage, and turned and began to walk, I caught sight of her ‘TIPS’ jar and almost laughed. My head was confused and spinning from the injustice, from the unwarranted aggression, from the unexpectedness of it all. Why was she being so RUDE?
I noticed my hand begin to tremble. This woman had broken the rules. This woman had broken the rules.
‘You think you know how it works,’ she muttered again. ‘But you don’t!’
‘You think you can cook a hotdog, but you can’t!’
‘WE COOK TO ORDER!’
‘You DON’T COOK AT ALL!’
‘Go eat some FISH AND CHIPS!’ she yelled, and at last I reached the door.
‘Maybe if you didn’t spend so long getting ready every morning,’ I spat back, pointing at her hair, her eyeshadow, her pursed red lips, ‘you could put the hotdogs on!’
My cheeks were burning, my head was throbbing, one hand was shaking, and as I found myself outside in cold and spitting rain I had a moment of complete and absolute clarity …
What was I doing?
What the hell was I doing?
All I’d wanted was a hotdog. And now here I was trembling in the rain. I had no idea what my next move was supposed to be. Nothing made sense. How had it come to this, and so quickly? Was there anything that woman or I could have done to avoid this situation?
Well, obviously there was.
She could have cooked a fucking hotdog.
But what on Earth was I teaching my son?
‘They’re very rude,’ said my little boy to a stranger outside, as we gathered our things, watched by all inside, and as I struggled, confused, to focus on whatever I was supposed to do next. ‘I didn’t even like my hotdog.’
SUGGESTED ACTIVITY:
With your friend, why not undertake the following role play?
One of you should pretend to be a person who wishes to buy a hotdog.
The other should pretend to be a person whose job it is to sell hotdogs.
See if you can work together to find a solution that solves both problems while avoiding conflict.
You have 3 attempts and 90 minutes.