My Mystery Guest Surprise

When you have Mystery Guests, you're slightly on edge. Your supervisor's inevitably near by, you're aware that everything you do is being noted down, and you're also vaguely aware of the fact that when everything has been noted down it's going to be given to your boss, and he may end up 'unhappy' with you. This may hopefully explain why I did what I did on a particular evening when Mystery Guests were staying with us...

We'd already identified who the Mystery Guests were, and they were sitting in the bar at a back table. I was already slightly stressed as they'd asked me for drinks that were out of stock, and I knew I'd lose a point for that right off the bat. Also in the bar was a large group of American businessmen, one of whom had spent the entire night complaining to me about our house wine selection, before selecting from the wine list a non-house red wine that I'd had to go down to the cellar for. They'd been in the bar since 6pm, and had been drinking whiskey non-stop.

Walking over to their table with the bottle of wine and four glasses, I was presented with a recurring problem; people sitting in large groups are almost always completely oblivious to their surroundings, focusing intently on themselves. This means that as a barman, I always end up looking somewhat foolish as I lean over to put drinks down, and have to lift my leg up to counter-balance and attempt to stop myself from falling over. I end up looking like a strange cross between a waiter and a ballet dancer. On this particular occasion, I didn't fall over. The bottle of wine did fall off my tray though.

Everything slowed down as I watched the bottle fall, land on the table, knock over a couple of drinks, hit the oil lamp, and then begin to decant itself onto the 'complaining' American. However, the slowly reddening jumper of the annoyed American was the least of my concerns. The far greater concern was the small fire on the table that had erupted after the oil lamp had spilled over.

Blowing the fire out and re-setting the table took relatively little time, and I took the American to reception and we sorted out his dry-cleaning expenses. I then re-poured drinks for the group and fetched another bottle of wine from the cellar. When I had finished, I glanced round just in time to see the back of the Mystery Guests as they left the bar and headed back to their room.

Strangely, I got 88% for that performance, and was apparantly friendly, knowledgeable, and... 'entertaining'.