Karen’s Diner to Fawlty Towers: The joy of bad hotel service

Waiter, waiter! The unusual appeal of bad service. Photo / File, Supplied; Chris Curry, Unsplash

OPINION:

Service with a smile is fine but it’s the more disastrous meals which are most memorable.

Sure, a sea view is nice. Fresh ingredients, of course. But what guests are really looking for are lashings of contempt and a side of indifference.

You only have to look at the rise of the Karen’s Diner restaurant chain to realise that diners are looking for a confrontation.

It’s the same reason why the Fawlty Towers dining experience has been one of London’s most successful interactive theatre experiences of the past decade. Described as serving up “mayhem on a plate”, it isn’t the schadenfreude of watching Basil Fawlty behaving badly on TV. It’s for guests that actually want to check into the hotel from hell.

They want to be questioned on every aspect of their order and wait hours for service, only to be told the kitchen is “fresh out of Waldorfs”. And they are willing to pay for the privilege.

At $130 per diner, you could buy a perfectly good meal anywhere else for that, minus the insults.

Similarly a “basic” burger at a Karen’s restaurant is a good few dollars dearer than competitors. Manners, it turns out, don’t cost anything. Being treated like dirt comes at a premium.

Back in the early days of the internet, a study confirmed something I think we all secretly knew: people love to complain.

The review by the University of Reading showed that customers are far more likely to leave a negative online review than a positive one. Sure, fawning waiting staff is what you’d expect but a bad experience that gets the people going. It is what Tripadvisor built their empire upon.

People secretly want to be treated poorly, especially when they are paying guests.

Uppity waiting staff is something people have taken joy from before time immemorial. The “waiter, waiter!” jokes as provided by dad and Christmas crackers everywhere might be older than you think. Classicist Barbara Bowen claimed to have found the first ever telling of “Waiter, waiter, there’s a fly in my soup!” from over 500 years ago, in her One Hundred Renaissance Jokes, an Anthology. (A laugh every one, I’m sure.)

A goodly knight spits something back into his cup, and hands it back to the banquet staff saying: “I don’t like flies myself, but maybe you do?”

So, jokes and dining fashions have changed a lot in the last half millennia, but poor service is eternal. The relation between the guest and the hotel staff carries a lot of expectations - as does “diner and waiter”, “served and subservient”. To subvert that can be a relief.

Bad service and the delight we take in it comes from an understanding of rules of the day.

Of course there is a special circle of Hades reserve for anyone who actually summons the attention of staff by yelling “waiter, waiter!” It’s right above people who click their fingers for service. It is what makes the punchline so cathartic, calling out the guest for being an arse instead of biting their tongue. Especially when it goes over the entitled diner’s head.

It’s a joke that could only come from an era with silver service and a professional class of waiters.

Just as the Karens of Karen’s Diner could only come from an era when many hospitality businesses are run on zero-hours contracts and undervalued McJobs.

Guests’ appetite for bad service has not changed, just those dishing it out.