Nothing Compares To Personality

There is another side to the seeming inevitability of the seasonal worker who lets down his employer by simply not turning up, and that relates to the unreliable employer: the one who one minute has employed someone and the next has the whim to take on someone else instead or to decide that no job actually exists. It does work both ways. And there is also what one might call a fitness-for-purpose test for bar owners, both potential and extant. I was reminded of this when someone said to me that, especially amidst the current economic downturn and a general view that there is likely to be a shake-out in terms of the number of bars, it might not be a bad thing if some bar owners/workers were a bit more friendly. A smile does actually go a long way. The fitness-for-purpose goes beyond just this. It is a whole personality and attitudinal issue. A bar may not amount to a great deal, but friendliness, personal presentation and interest in the customer can compensate hugely.

There is a list of questions that the customer will almost invariably have. It comprises - do you live here, how long have you been here, what's it like, what's the weather going to do, where's the best place to change currency, how do I get to... . The bar as unofficial tourist information office. But once through that checklist, having satisfied the quest for knowledge, who is then more important - the customer or the bar owner? There is but one answer. Yet one hears of instances where, for example, an owner will give a life history at some considerable length. No-one cares, other than that owner. And the reason is that the thing people like talking about most is themselves. This does not of course preclude the good tale to be told and one with which to amuse the punters, but the lesson from course 101 in how to do small talk is that the other person and what the other person has to say is always more important.

Where the language barrier exists, there is still no reason why a customer has to be treated with what at times can seem like suspicion. Some local Spanish bars can give off this impression. Not all, but some. And then there are the restaurants. The vogue is for restaurant chic, a movement towards a certain sterility, a place of eating to be admired rather than one in which to feel comfortable, one often with too much intrusive hovering as opposed to the art of the waiter making him or herself almost disappear but being constantly alert. There is much to be said for places that retain a sense of being lived-in. Would you rather live in a house that has that sense or one that has the everything-in-the-right-placeness vacuity and stiffness of a showroom? Well everything can be in the right place, and indeed should be, but can still give off what the locals like to refer to as "ambiente familiar" which can mean family or informal atmosphere - and is the latter that is usually meant. Now we also have the ubiquity of "chill", even if it is just the music. This is a de rigueur me-too, a suffusion of cool amid the fusion; a designer concept of dining alienation. From bar owners to restaurant atmospheres, nothing compares to personality, and personality above all.

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