If
you're not a customer, piss off!
"Charming", you're thinking, but without a doubt,
the worst thing about running a cafe is the fact that we have
to provide a toilet facility. Most customers treat it ok,
some don't, but the sheer volume makes it very difficult and
costly to maintain and many people just don't realise this.
Imagine
if your toilet at home was in constant use, one person after
another trooping through – it's a real pain. Particularly
when you consider that there has been an increase in venues
providing food and drink in Matlock Bath lately and some of
them do not even provide a toilet facility. This
leaves us with the problem of lazy people who can't be bothered
to go and find the public toilets at each end of the village
thinking it is their right to pee in our teashop – even
though they've had food and drink elsewhere – we call
these people toileteers.
'Toileteers', our word for ignorant buggers who enter cafes
just to go to the loo, preferably without supporting them
in anyway if they can get away with it. We spent a lot of
time and money producing The Victorian Teashop in Matlock
Bath and most people appreciate what we've done here –
we even have a museum upstairs and the decor and atmosphere
is second to non, but some people seem to think that cafes,
ours and others, are some sort of public toilet facility.
The Victorian Teashop is a private venue and our customers
are invited onto the premises to enjoy what we offer in the
nice surroudings. They can even go to the toilet if they wish.
Some people, however, just wander in like they own the place
and head straight for the loo. When we tell them the public
toilet facilities are outside and nearby, they get stroppy
with us – as though their need for the toilet outweighs
our need to maintain our sanity and the cleanliness of our
facilities for use by real customers. We get thousands of
people through it every year, therefore the phrase, "we
don't need anymore shit from you", really does come into
it's own.
Many
thousands of people come to Matlock Bath every year and we
just can't be expected to provide a public toilet service
– the flushing alone uses an enourmous amount of water
(which we are metered for) and if you've ever heard someone
flushing three or four times trying to get rid of the mess
they've made when they haven't 'spent a penny' with us, you'll
understand what I mean.
Just providing for the customers we have is a real down side
to running this sort of venue, but some people just don't
care particularly and you can imagine what that means in a
heavily used toilet – it even brings our own presentation
into question, which is not fair – one of our staff
has to go in and out of the toilet all the time just to make
sure no one has left it in a state – it is time consuming
and undesirable.
It
can also be embarrasing. Recently, we were reasonably full
with a good atmosphere going and four stupid looking people
walked in and all made their way to the toilet door and formed
their own queue. What a set of tossers! I cannot descibe the
frustration of trying to run a decent venue in an already
awkward place like Matlock Bath when people just treat you
and what you have created like shit. One of the most annoying
tricks is when people want to go themselves, but shove their
kids in through the door in front of them and expect us to
take extra pity on their needs: "Can my little boy just
use your loo, he only has one kidney." We call this technique
'the human shield' and we usually call in the terrorist
branch of the local police to deal with them.
Of
course, we don't allow toileteers to get away with it and
usually challange them, but that just spoils the atmosphere,
especially when they call you a "miserable fucking twat"
or threaten to kill you, which also tends to add to our own
disappointment, discomfort and disillusionment. As I said
before, most of these people are completely selfish and do
not understand that our own well-being and the well-being
of our business is disruppted, so if you're a 'toileteer',
try to understand that your toilet needs cannot be addressed
in isolation in a busy venue like Matlock Bath, so be a little
less cheeky, more thoughtful, more courteous – and perhaps
even a customer – failing that, Piss Off!
Peter
Hague, 25th March, 2007
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