Chris Maclean: beguiled by sales people

I think the three words I least like to hear in a pub are "What you want to do is…" My heart sinks when I hear this line.

"What you want to do is..." is inevitably the lead to a discourse by a customer who clearly knows better than us.

When I took over the pub I had a clear vision of what I wanted to achieve. It needed cleaning and decorating. I wanted the fruit machines, cigarette machine and other distractions out and I wanted to clamp down on the behaviour. But that was pretty much it. And now, nine months later, it has become what I wanted. The hotel is fully occupied. The bar is busy. There is a meeting of the Friends of the Earth in the bar. It is busy but calm. Perfect.

But now, tonight, I have a customer banging on about what I want to do. How does he know? He's never once paused to ask my opinion. We've never met before. What has given him this incredible insight to know what I want to do?

I am staggered by the number of licensees who are beguiled by sales people into buying some kind of 'solution' to a problem they never had. Some spend huge amounts of money on schemes designed to improve their businesses which patently cannot work. In sheds throughout the land there must be hundreds of those horrible sausage-warming devices that sat on the bar designed to satisfy the hungriest customer. Those nasty Perspex cabinets with warm nachos ready to be served in a wax paper cup with an indescribable sauce. They languish in the shed covered in dust.

Time will tell about the smoking ban 'solutions'. Heaters, ashtrays, ventilation, shelters, signs, lighting and a range of other products are now being offered as critical aspects of the imminent ban. But I guess many will never be used and most will end in the shed.

In my shed I have catering trolleys, refrigerated cabinets, nasty hotel furniture and extravagant grills from previous incarnations of this pub when the, then, licensees felt compelled to buy them because they represented the key to the success of their business then found they weren't.

All my customers have a right to tell me what to do. But by the same token I think I have the right to believe I know what I want to do. Don't I?