Speaker (Westminster)

Rick the Manager (Falling Down)

The thing I really dig about living in England is your attention to time-keeping.

Over here you play by the rules. If a meeting starts at 3pm, then you can bet your life, everyone will be there, sipping on their tea by five minutes to: and if a train is held up by ten minutes, jeez the bottom drops out of your world!

Maybe that's why I love pubs. They have their own quintessentially British brand of time-keeping. Ding, ding and the bell rings for last orders. That'll be 11.00 pm. Ding, ding, there it goes again; time at the bar. That'll be 11.10 pm, no more service, but ten minutes of drinking-up time.

Things have softened a little since your Mr Blair had his way, but most pubs still play by these quaint, old-school rules.

Try exporting a concept like that to the United States! I don't think so. We Americans just don't seem to get it. Some even go as far as thinking it's their God-given right to make up their own regulations, never mind convention or company policy.

Take this thing that happened when I was in LA: I was working as a manager in a downtown burger joint. It was nothing special, but I liked the job and the team around me were pretty cool, well most of them anyway.

We had this policy about different menus and when we'd serve them. The breakfast menu was available until 11.30, then we moved onto lunch. Fairly straightforward, and none of our customers had a problem with the system. Except one it seems.

It was a hot summer's day and we'd just moved from the breakfast to the lunch menu. Must've been around 11.33 am. I didn't notice the guy at the counter but Sheila - a little tramp whose heart was never in the job - called me over. Seemed there was a problem.

"Rick," she said smirking slightly, "There's a customer who wants to talk to you."

I walked over and offered to help, but immediately I could tell this guy was a whole lot of trouble; he had a lot of attitude from the outset. He demanded we serve him something from the breakfast menu – despite it being 11.33.

I'm pretty well-versed in customer service skills. So, using all my charm and with a smile on my face, I explained clearly but politely that we'd stopped serving breakfast.

The guy wasn't satisfied. He said he wanted breakfast, not lunch. I calmly responded by telling him this was not Wammy Burger policy.

Then he asked me if I'd ever heard the expression 'the customer is always right'. Well, of course I had, like I said I've had extensive customer-services training, but as I repeated: Wammy Burger did not serve from breakfast after 11.30 am

Out of the corner of my eye I could see that Sheila was enjoying this exchange of views. I never liked the little harlot.

Maybe it was Sheila that irritated me. Perhaps, I just knew this conversation wasn't going anywhere fast. Suppose it could've been the heat. I don't know. Anyway, I thought I was being polite, but maybe I came across a little insincere.

He repeated his demand for breakfast, saying he didn't want lunch, and I kinda responded, "Well hey, I'm really sorry".

That was that. All hell broke loose.

"I'm really sorry too," he said reaching into a gym bag he'd placed on the counter, before taking out some kind of sub machine-gun. Turns out the bag was jam-packed with weapons. All the guns in the world, it looked like.

He started waving the thing around, terrifying my staff and customers. As you'd expect there was a commotion, particularly after he shot half a dozen holes in the roof. Said the gun had a sensitive trigger, but I think it was deliberate.

He calmed down a little; I have no doubt my team were reassured by my reasoned, thoughtful response, taking charge of this volatile situation. But he didn't leave. Instead, he started questioning people about their Wammy Burger experience.

One woman couldn't take the stress – she threw up there and then. So he turned to me and made a joke about her being a critic, how she obviously hated the special sauce. Frankly, I felt it was neither the time nor the place for humour, but he was the psycho holding the gun. What could I do?

Finally, we got rid of him, but not before he'd changed his mind and ordered from the lunch menu. Can you believe it - the guy shot up my burger bar because I couldn't serve breakfast after 11.30, THEN he ordered from the lunch menu.

What a day. A main course of terror, a side-portion of humiliation and a large irony drink to wash it down!

That's why I like being over here in London. That's why I like drinking in pubs like The Speaker. It has a lovely little bell that chimes at 11.10 on the dot, and everyone accepts that's the signal for end of service from the drinks menu, no fuss, no arguments.

The bar staff at the Speaker really value good service too. Sheila could learn a lot from these people. The little bitch.

Rick the manager's rating for The Speaker – 7 / 10

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