Chris Maclean: An awful breakfast

Saturday's trip to the rugby was bound to be a messy affair and it was with some foresight that I took the opportunity to grab a decent breakfast in one of the big pub operators with a presence in the railway station. It was a mistake. The 10 minute wait revealed a plate containing what I ordered ~ their 'Farmhouse Breakfast'. It was awful. Two pieces of bacon, fused together, resembled those unidentifiable dog chews available in markets. The hash browns should have been called mash browns. The only reason it was called a Farmhouse Breakfast, I mused, was its proximity to manure.

I needed to complain. But I didn't. The two candidates for my wrath were either a pleasant enough Polish cashier who had given me more options on my choice of coffee than I could handle; "small, medium, large or giant, black, white, with or without sugar. Latte, frappe, cappuccino, espresso". I had a headache. The other was an unassuming African waiter who took great pains to deliver food with the least chance of disaster. He wanted to work his shift and go. Neither would receive my complaint well, neither was in a position to do much about it and, I suspect, neither really cared about it.

So I left. I had been tempted to discreetly write an offensive word under the plate using the sauce sachets available but that would have been unpleasant. Leaving was the best option.

We, the British public, are very bad complainers. We either make a complete hash of it, blunder on at the wrong person a litany of discontent adding additional irrelevant material then leave, or we bottle up our complaint and then leave without saying a word. There are alarming statistics to illustrate that a significant percentage of people, faced with a bad pint in a pub, either change drinks or, often as not, go elsewhere. That is catastrophic as far as we are concerned.

I want to believe complaints are a positive mechanism to bring operators into line with what they are aiming to deliver. But most people who receive complaints reconstruct their reality to deal with it. "Yes, he always complains ~ he's that type".

I've tried biting irony. Recently I have waited over five months for a table and wrote to the supplier telling them I'd read that in 1943 Pat Reid tunnelled all the way out of Stalag Luft XIII using only a dessert spoon in only three months. Why in 2008 should I wait so long for something so basic?

I will get my table. Hopefully it will be soon. But I also reckon it'll be scratched. Sarcasm doesn't always pay.