You may have noticed a lot of my blogs lately are whinges about service. I notice I’m turning into a Grumpy Old Man. This is interesting because I made a positive decision to be more demanding when I got back from the USA and since then I’ve been exploring the nature of service, complaining, and lack of same in the UK. Last weekend I was chatting with a Frenchman and he thought it strange too how Brits do not complain: even given appalling food they will respond with a faux-joyeux “lovely, thanks” when pressed by the waiter.

I have a few half-baked notions for how it may have come about, but we are definitely stuck in a vicious cycle now: British customers don’t complain, so British staff don’t get used to dealing with complaints, so when customers DO complain, it doesn’t do any good. The cycle has to be broken somewhere, so I’m doing my bit and (a) trying to take criticism positively, and (b) trying to be more demanding / assertive / critical.

I just need to work on directing these criticisms where they can be useful. For now, I vent these views here in the hope I can encourage a culture of constructive complaint and maybe, just maybe, get people to hope for - nay, demand - levels of service comparable to mainland Europe and the USA. If I were American I would be able to call it my Patriotic Duty.