Damien Galeone

We are at our favorite pub and we are drinkless. It’s been about thirty minutes since we had a beer. Though I should be concerned about the fact that I am starting to twitch, I am focusing on the waiter. Waiters. There are three of them. Apparently the guy who was working the garden service was reassigned to the inside, and as an act of rebellion he is actively not looking at us.

Part of the training to become a Czech waiter must be developing an ability to look at a table of people and not see them. The waiter has looked at our table, the wall behind us, the post next to me, the window, the Bozkov advertisement to our left, but not us. We have obviously displeased him by not only our existence, but the fact that we are existing at this pub and thirsty.

I love my adoptive country and accept its customer service quirks. I can usually see the humor in mind bogglingly bad waiters and grouchy clerks. I can laugh and marvel at grocery store employees who choose to roll out massive pallets to restock at 5 pm on Friday. I can roll my eyes and giggle at the clerk who will study a document with a magnifying glass in order to find a reason to reject my request to stamp it. I can laugh when a cashier ignores me in lieu of literally any other task. I think it’s charming, in some way, that a waiter will get overwhelmed by anything more than three customers. All humor is lost, however, when I am waiting for a drink because of a grumpy waiter.

We try to hail him, I go up and ask him for a drink but he walks past. The Blind Eye is strong with this one. While my friend goes to the bar to ask another waiter for service, I come up with a series of alarmingly detailed torture scenarios involving a pint glass and his rectum. But then I tweak my methods to specifically torture Czech waiters. And so I imagine taking a menu and never returning it or three people at a table ordering different drinks. I imagine a huge party of the owner’s friends coming through the door twenty minutes before last call. I imagine ordering a mixed drink. Of the madness it would cause.

In the end, a waitress serves us. But the damage is done. I decide to penalize the pub by boycotting for three weeks. I won’t tell the waiter this, it would kill me to make him so happy.