No Reservations.

One of the most invaluable pieces of advice I received in this job was given to me on my second week; I noted that although our last manager Stephen would rage and storm behind closed doors, out front he was all business; the second he got through the door that separates them from us, he managed to shake off all trace of the man who just spent twenty minute stabbing the spaghetti with a steak knife because his life was a mess (and it's generally considered bad form to stab the staff), and he was then Stephen Ross, debonaire manager of the pub, who looked so neat you would be forgiven for thinking his entire being - from his hair to his accent - had done some serious time inside that most gentlemanly of inventions, the Corby Trouser Press, giving his whole look the kind of distinction you only get from common hotel room appliances. Looking at him then, he had confidence by the bucketload, a cut-glass accent and the conflict resolution skills of a saint, and you would never have guessed that the very same man was to be caught two months later with his hand in the till. When I asked him about it, he said:

"You need a switch."
"What do you mean?"
"You need to be able to turn on the charm at will. You know me," he said, smiling and waving to people at assorted tables, "these pricks don't mean a thing to me. They could all fuck off and die alone on a mountain face for all I care." This all sounded particularly strange coming from somebody whose facial expression gave the distinct impression that he was so pleased to see these people he could break out into uncontrollable fellating at any moment.

While Adolf Hitler was generally a better role model than Stephen, this is fantastic advice to anybody working in a fishbowl, where all eyes are on you and you're on the front end of the business. There was once a very clearly-labelled switch in my brain that decides how I act and respond to customers - one is "barman", the other is "waiter". The Barman is very much a slightly condensed version of myself with the conscience dial turned ever-so-slightly down and the exclusive feature of being able to mop up vomit without adding to it in the process, but "The Waiter" was a facade I began to erect to disguise my undiluted hatred for the food side of the business. And it all began with a less-than-glowing mystery customer report, which wasn't so much a review as a three-page report on how my skills with the food side of the things were so blatantly lacking that it's a miracle I managed to get the food onto their table without suffering some sort of debilitating brain damage on the way over, collapsing in a heap of beans and salad garnish, swallowing my own tongue and shitting my pants as my meager pint-pulling brain struggled to process the earth-shattering request of "salt and pepper please". Salt... and pepper? I only understand "pint of bitter", and even then you're chancing it, pal. Needless to say, my food-serving skills left a lot to be desired.

We have mystery customers turn up now and again to rate our performance - company-sponsored plain-clothes spies, sent to infiltrate our ranks, check our customer service, then inspect our toilets with the sort of scrutiny that you would usually only get with a chalk outline of a body, a chemical contamination suit and the sound of evidence being photographed and zip-locked. They then fill out a questionnaire, with questions like:

Was toilet paper readily available?
Were the staff tidy and presentable?
Was the cutlery clean and free of bends?
Were all staff polite and well-skilled?

That sort of thing. Now, the first time they came in on my watch, the answer to that last question came in looking something like this:

"[The waiter] served my food within the designated time limit. He then asked if I needed anything, before returning to the bar where he began to talk to a customer at length. I received no courtesy check. [The waiter] had an overall unpleasant manner and lacked confidence. Needs training to grade 4 service specifications."

And with this (and a quick skim through the grade 4 service manual, a guide the company issued in an attempt to turn their entire roster of barmen into a gang of knuckle-dragging, soup-spilling, waistcoated gimps), The Waiter was born and I had my "switch". Loosely based on Basil Fawlty, I would approach a table, hands clasped, to make sure that their meals have met their expectations and to ask if I can get them anything; anything at all. Go on, anything. I'm serious, whatever you want, I will get it. Tomato sauce? No trouble at all, madame, no trouble at all, I shall return in a couple of seconds even if I have to infiltrate Farmer Smith's tomato patch myself, mush the tomatoes up with my bare hands and slit Farmer Smith's throat for attempting to hinder my divine mission for the world's most famous fruit-that's-not-really-a-fruit, you shall have your tomato sauce, I swear on the honour of my family. Should I be killed on my journey, another shall take my place, and he shall deliver your tomato sauce. You wait here. Won't be long. Honestly. I seriously won't be a jiffy. The eponymous jiffy will seem like a millennium compared to the lightspeed delivery of your tomato sauce. Wait. OK. Thank you. OK.

Then, on the way back to the bar, the switch is flicked across, my airless waiter glide becomes weighted and brutish once again as I swagger back the bar, pull my usual scowl out of the bag and go back to being myself. As I slap the pot onto a little saucer, my clasped hands become independent of one another as I rummage around cupboards with all the care and consideration of a tractor on the motorway.

"Where's the fucking tomato ketchup?"

Once the absurdly small pot has been filled to the brim with rich, crimson tomato sauce, the lid is screwed back on and on the way down the corridor I flip the switch and I'm back to being the waiter who can never do enough for you. This all started as something I did to amuse the waitress, a harmless persona I could evoke at will - it went through a week-long development process in which time the waiter lost his French accent and the deliberately badly-emphasized (and even more awkwardly-pronounced) "MON-sieur". But soon enough this harmless persona became something more, something sinister. At first, it began following me home - at first maintaining a distance and busying itself when I would turn around, but after a while I became aware of the waiter being around outside of standard pub hours. When making cups of tea for Pa back at the shack, I would find myself delivering the mug with an overly-effette waiter flourish before realizing what I had just done. I am very similar to my father in manner but my father really is not the sort who takes nonsense lightly - growing tired of the next door neighbours' cats getting into our garden, he bought a military-grade catapult and asked me to bring a bag of ice home from work one day. He spent the rest of the evening shooting the cats from his bedroom window with extremely hard lumps of ice. I don't think I've ever seen him so happy.

"Why ice, Dad?" I asked as I handed him yet another chilled projectile.
"Simple. Shoot the cat, melt the evidence. 'Oh, officer, look, somebody shot my cat, here's some water to prove it, it used to be ice' - nah. Doesn't happen. I'd say you're more or guaranteed to get away with anything if you can melt the evidence. Just don't tell your mother."

That's my dad.

"What's that," he asked, "is that your waiter bit?"
"Yeah, it's just something I do for a laugh down the pub."
"Sure," said Pa, taking a concerned slurp. "Careful though. You might get one of those split personality things. Like Dr. Jekyll, or Bono and The Edge." He then tucked into a slice of cake.

He had hit the nail on the head - much as he hit Mr. Tibbles on the head with a lightspeed lump of frozen water, again and again until the mog retreated back to his home territory, dazed and confused (and never quite the same to this day - I never thought a cat could be moon-faced or cross-eyed but that's Pa for you) - but by then it was probably a bit late. I could sense the waiter taking hold whenever any table service came into play. Behind the bar, I was fine, but my table service "bit" was very heavily reliant on The Waiter. It didn't help matters either - I wouldn't have been bothered if I could suddenly turn on this customer satisfaction Superman, but the fact is, underneath it I was still me; the same lazy, incompetent and foul-mannered me who has been so consistently bad at serving food in the past. The only difference now is that I was acting like some Bistro-baiting prick. I had begun to fear The Waiter would never leave, that he had set up something of a squat in my psyche and would be there forever, like some sort of hippy (albeit an extremely well-mannered one). I took this concern to the one person I trust inherently, my lone confidant within the walls of the pub.

"You what?"
"Eddie, I'm serious. It's like I'm compelled to do it."
"What, act like a prick?"
"Yeah." It's that kind of insight that will someday make Eddie his millions, of that I am certain.
"Alright, no problem, just... I dunno, stop it?"
"It's hard, I've gotten used to acting differently around the food orders."
"Alright, leave it to me, I'll deal with the food end of it. I'll go and see if we've got any Magners out the back and then I'm all ears. You're a fucking nut though."
"Thanks, Eddie." Although no sooner had Eddie gone, my barman sense began to tingle - the sound of a car pulling up outside and all four doors opening made its way through the flimsy glass and I immediately began to assess the situation; probably a family, maybe businessmen, but certainly not out for the evening as it's two in the afternoon. But I could sense, with every fibre of my being, what was about to happen, and I quite accurately predicted the first words out of their mouth.

"Are you still doing food?" enquired Julie, a middle-aged woman with an astonishing head of blonde hair.
"Absolutely," began the waiter, muscling his way in front of me before I had a chance to take control. He didn't ask if they had a reservation; nobody ever has a reservation at that time of day. "Would you like to see a menu?"
"Oh, lovely," and with that she went outside to answer her mobile, menu under her arm. Eddie was taking his sweet time - I thought of going to get him, but it was too late. She was back.

"OK, I think we'll have..." and with that, she rattled off a four-person food order, in instruction to hold the fourth person until their final member arrived, as he was stuck in traffic. Eddie walked in through the door, box of Magners under his arm (as well as the green breakage clipboard - Eddie usually breaks something when he goes out to the cage; it's become so commonplace that we have considered an automatic lock-in policy like the Crystal Maze, e.g. if you break another case of Budweiser you have to spend a month in the cage) and obviously dismayed; I had somehow failed him by offering to take a food order. She then rattled off a drinks order - only one alcoholic drink, a brandy on the rocks, and three cokes. An elderly woman - Julie's mother, probably - came in and took a coke. Eddie got to work on the rest of the drinks as Julie beckoned me to one side. I went over and pretended to listen intently; I knew what was coming - some absurd dietary concern. If you're allergic to nuts, then be a man and take a gamble, maybe we use nuts and maybe we don't. Let's spin the wheel, for once.
"Could you do me a favour?"
"Absolutely," said the waiter. Eddie let out a sigh as he put together the drinks order on a tray.
"Ah, here he is - could you take my father to the toilet?" And with that, I looked behind her to see a man relying on two walking sticks, dribbling slightly. He gave me a wink. Eddie nearly choked.

With that, the waiter put on his coat and literally sprinted out of my head, spats and cummerbund falling to the floor as he made a break for it. I was very much on my own as the waiter went running hell for leather out of my consciousness, and out of my life forever. I cursed him as a traitor, but secretly envied him. As I began to adjust back to life without a split personality, I suddenly became aware that several seconds had passed since the original question had been posed and I was now giving the impression that I was both disgusted and deaf, two traits you certainly don't want if you're taking senior citizens to the shitter.

"Hmm?" That's the way, pretend you haven't heard them. Nice going, idiot.
"Could you take my father to the toilet? He's ninety four years old." Quite an achievement by any stretch of the imagination. "I know this is a big ask but his carer is stuck in traffic - he'll be here in two minutes. All I need you to do is maybe give him a hand getting in there and then just listen out for any problems."

Problems!?

"Right, right," I said, secretly fumbling for any excuse - any at all - that would get me off this potentially sticky hook; I turned to Eddie but he had gone, and from the sniggering in the bar I realized that I was now not only in hot water, but I was the entertainment for the next few minutes. Right, OK, think, complete the sentence... sorry, I cannot help your elderly father take a shit because... nope, nothing. There's literally no nice way to say "sorry I can't help your elderly dad take a dump". While the boys in the excuses department got to work, I had to think on my feet. "Sure, um, what if there is a problem, should I -"
"In that case come and get me and I'll sort it out. His carer will be here in a second, don't worry, it's fine." And like an idiot, I believed her. I genuinely believed that this would be in no way weird or permanently scarring. Hey, if there's some sort of problem when the century-old man is having a crap, I'll just go and get his daughter. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

"Actually," began my excuse department, making a wild stab at the jobsworth card, "I'm not meant to leave the bar, Eddie here wouldn't -"
"I don't mind," said Eddie through a grin that made the Cheshire Cat look positively glum. "You take as long as you need." Julie beamed. As did I, but I swore revenge on Eddie. I often wonder exactly what people think when they think of bar staff - I'm almost certain that they think we have some sort of doctor-patient confidentiality thing going on. We are asked our opinions, often on topics we know precisely nothing about (such as medicine) and therefore we are somehow bound to keep the conversations secret. The fact that you are reading this is proof that we are under absolutely no obligation to keep our appointments private. If I can give you one piece of advice, please watch what you say and do around bartenders. Especially if you're in Wales. You never know...

"I'm Dai, nice to meet you," said Dai, thrusting out a hand for the shaking; after all, we were both men, and if one man is going to help another take a dump it's only polite to go over the formalities. I shook it for as long as I could before Dai crushed every bone in my hand with his titan grip; this man was obviously once frighteningly strong, and obviously still had a great deal of strength, and I could only imagine how disheartening it must be to go from being as mighty and powerful as he obviously was in days gone by, to requiring the help of the bar staff when you need the loo on a day out. He was a very pleasant man, in that he was aware that I was slightly uncomfortable with the whole thing, and was generally very smiley and chuckled a lot, a warm, wheezing chuckle that matched his Valley-boy baritone. We're not far away from a "home" - the villagers just refer to it as "the home", leaving unsaid the part about it being a home for mentally unstable old people. So we get a lot of them come down - at least the ones who are allowed out, so I'm quite used to dealing with them. But Dai was sharp as a tack, and noticed I had apprehensions.

"I bet you didn't sign up for this, did you boyo?" chuckled Dai as we went into the toilet. He began to unbuckle.
"Ha, it's fine," - it fucking well wasn't, but I realized soon enough that Dai was very kindly offering to meet me halfway on this and the least I could do was be alright about it - "What do you need me to do here?" Fearing the worst, I was cautious when Dai simply put his hands out.
"Just give me a hand down."
"A hand down where?" I asked, mortified; I immediately put my hands up as if Dai had just pulled a gun on me.
"Haha, no, I mean give me a hand getting onto the toilet."
"Oh, of course, sorry," I fumbled, extremely embarrassed. I offered my arm out as a support; Dai put one tweed-clad arm around it, dropped his trousers with the other (I looked away, as you do), and then told me he was alright; I retracted my arm as the door shut behind me. As Dai lowered himself onto the toilet, I secretly longed for The Waiter to return. The Waiter wouldn't have had a problem with any of this - The Waiter would have been practically sweating decorum, standing to attention with a stoney face, giving that impression of autonomy that people require in order to be comfortable when they're being lowered onto the toilet with their trousers in an undignified bunch over their shoes - if the other person involved doesn't give the impression that they are somehow dehumanized, somehow mechanical, how can anyone possibly be expected to do prolonged, watery shits in peace? The Waiter had that to burn - he would probably have offered to wipe Dai's arse with his bare hands. It's like those guards outside Buckingham Palace - they can't move; not their face, not their body, not anything. Not allowed - those silver mimes have nothing on them. While the downside of this is that day in, day out, they must have people testing this behaviour out for hours on end by waving them and touching their big silly hats while some fat Americans take pictures, the upside is that I seriously wouldn't mind taking a dump in their company. That'd be no problem; I'd be fine with that. Maybe that's why they behave like that - that's how Britain established dominance, running a vast empire from a tiny island. Make them feel comfortable enough to take a shit in front of you and then attack when their trousers are quite literally around their ankles.

I went to leave, before realizing I had actually been asked to make sure there were no... problems.

"You OK in there Dai?" I enquired as the noises began.
"Fine, fine, you'll know if I'm not, ha ha. So..." said Dai through the door. There's very few acceptable topics of conversation in which to engage when one party is currently depositing the last year's worth of food into the toilet. "What's this month's guest ale?"
"Um, Black Swan."
"Black Swan..." he said, followed by another spate of sphincter-borne spattering. "Um... what kind of strength is that? It's a dark ale, yeah?"
"Yeah, it's a dark ale, it's about four point two."
"Four point two!", exclaimed Dai in shock as the sound of an accelerating toilet roll undercut his every word with a muffled rumble of carboard on plastic. However, I could hear through the door that there was signs of a struggle. It was at this point that I began to wonder exactly what would be expected of me by this point. Would I have to go in there and hose him down? The Waiter could have handled this; The Waiter would have stiffened his upper lip to the point of paralysis, gone in there and taken one for the team in the name of customer service. But sadly, I was no longer The Waiter, nor could I ever be again - I was me, nothing more, nothing less, and certainly not a personal bidet.

At that point, the front door to the toilet went - oh Christ, I thought, who the fuck's coming in now? If it's Eddie, I was fully prepared to dip that stupid mop of hair of his into the blocked urinal; if it was Henry or anybody else for that matter, there was literally no way to make this look good, and I may be fired before I got the chance to corroborate the story with the relatives. I was innocent!

Nobody was to be fired, as the person on his way in was Trevor. Trevor was Dai's aide - dressed in a medical outfit, Trevor was a young man with a firmly trimmed moustache and a heart quite clearly made of pure gold. Finding a member of staff listening in on his patient's bowel movements was not a problem, as he came in with a warm smile and shook my hand like he'd known me all his life. He had obviously known Dai a while too as the handshake turned the remnants of my post-Dai hand into a pile of fractured mush.

"Are you -?"
"Yeah, he's in there now."
"Is that Trevor?" called Dai. "Send him in!"
"You're not causing trouble are you Dai?" called Trevor with a chuckle. He and Dai obviously got on very well considering their relationship was essentially the same as the relationship between an arse and toilet paper.
"Have I ever caused trouble, Trevor? C'mon son, I've got a good one for you here."

I left at this point and left Trevor to do the honours and tidy Dai up a bit. After a quick discussion with Elaine, Trevor's meal was on the house and Eddie was told he would be punished.

"Totally worth it man. Plus it solved that problem of yours didn't it?"

He had me there. But punishment was still on the cards.

Afterwards, Trevor came to the bar with all the empty plates and glasses; evidently an unstoppable help machine, I became curious of Trevor. I have always been curious of people like him; people who can do the impossible with a smile on their face.

"How do you guys do it?" A friend of mine is training to be a nurse and I'm constantly amazed at how she manages her seemingly never-ending mound of poo-related duties without dry-heaving to the point of actually throwing up her stomach lining. Trevor seemed a nice young man; coming on for thirty, handsome in a rugged sort of way, and infallibly polite, as you must be if you're the kind of person who feels ready to help those who can't help themselves in that department. I've never been more grateful to be bartender by day/writer by night than I was when I was talking to Trevor.

"Oh, you get used to it."
"I don't think I could. You're incredible."
"Thank you," said Trevor, seemingly surprised that his actions are considered heroic. "It's not for everyone."
"I can imagine. Anyway, was the meal alright?"
"It was lovely, thank you so much," Trevor said. "I think Dai's got a little extra for you boys, considering what you did. As you can probably imagine, a lot of people won't do it." I could imagine it, as I had come dangerously close to it myself.

Dai made his way to the bar and propped himself up, at which point he reached into his pocket and produced a roll of fivers - I suppose aids like Trevor don't come cheap, so it stood to reason that Dai had done alright for himself when he was at the height of his powers.

"You boys did me a favour," he said in his soothing tones that seeped into the ears like melted chocolate. "So here's a little something extra for your bother."

And that's when I noticed - the index finger, left hand; the one that maintained a vice-like grip on the outstretched fiver had evidently been put to more nefarious purposes this afternoon; c'mon Trevor, if you can wipe all that up the least you can do is check the hands for remnants of the foul-smelling festivities. Check the hands or settle the bill on their behalf, you had gloves on, I saw them! I tried to explain the stain in a more innocent way - maybe he was a heavy smoker for many years and that's a nicotine stain. Yeah, right; nicotine doesn't usually glisten, and it never has a very small lump in it.

Ugh.

"Oh no, honestly..."
"Now now," he said, patting away my protests with his hands, wafting the scent towards me as he went. "You did me a favour and I know how difficult it can be. You'd be surprised how many places won't acommodate requests like that." I really fucking wouldn't. Nor would Eddie.
"Really, it's all part of the job, I -" but before I could maintain my firm stance of 'all in a day's work', fingers encrusted with what had once been 'all in a Dai's bowel' tucked a squidgy blue note into my hand as he waddled out of the door. I offered my sincere thanks as I wondered what to do with poonote. Can't burn it, that's illegal apparently (bullshit if you ask me, if you're rich enough to literally burn money - or stamps, for that matter - then who's the Queen, one of the richest women in the world anyway, to tell you that you can't use her face as a lighter?) - can't put it in the bin, people will want to know why. So, folding the crisp, five pound note at the corners as best I could, I did the only honourable thing.

"Here you go Eddie, that table left a tenner - here's your half."
"Wow, cheers man," said Eddie, putting the five pound note - and its foul-smelling travel companion - in his pocket.

Revenge smells bad.