A never-to-be-repeated performance

Last night a colleague and I were sitting at a table at a local restaurant entertaining a candidate for a campus job when another colleague came in the door to have dinner with her son. She walked over for a chat and when we introduced the candidate, our colleague said, "I was just saying that this would be a horrible night to have a job candidate in town." She had no idea just how right she was.

Let me say first that the candidate was charming and did not utter a single complaint about the miserable dining experience. If I were a restaurant critic, I would give the candidate four stars and the restaurant none--unless it's possible to give negative stars.

We normally take job candidates to the best restaurant in town, but it's closed on Mondays, so we had reservations at another really fine restaurant, but a disastrous fire earlier in the day had closed down that entire downtown block, so our options were limited. We finally went with Plan C, and I don't want to embarrass a valued local business so I'll just refer to the restaurant as The Obese Insect.

Now I should point out that our miserable dining experience wasn't entirely the restaurant's fault. For instance, they couldn't control the weather (a torrential downpour that made it impossible to get into the restaurant without getting wet), but they could have controlled the thermostat a little better. It's hard to enjoy a meal when you're damp and shivering, especially when you try to warm up with some hot tea but the waiter replies, "I think we have some tea bags but I don't know where they are and I don't know if I can find them" and then offers instead Sierra Mist. (Because a cold soft drink is such a great substitute for hot tea.)

The service was slow (and not because of great demand, either--only two other tables were occupied) and the food was flavorless and overcooked. Note to chef: boiling vegetables until they're mushy does not improve their flavor, and then serving them on pasta and pouring some cream on top sullies the luscious label "Pasta Primavera." And why, please, were we forced to listen to "Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairies" over dinner during a torrential rainstorm in March?

Then the time came to pay the bill. Most local restaurants know the college drill--itemized check, no tax--but not our surly waiter, who must be a frustrated actor because he put on quite a performance: calling the manager on his cell phone right there in front of us, complaining about how unreasonable we were, and finally whining, "I'll just pay the tax out of my own pocket." It was an impressive performance but unlikely to make a job candidate want to live here.

But I doubt that he'll have a chance to repeat this performance for other campus groups. I've notified the people responsible for scheduling candidate visits and explained the whole sorry situation, so they're unlikely to send any more campus business toward that restaurant--and I won't be heartbroken if our miserable meal helps to bring down the curtain on that particular performance.