Watching the English

MOANING AND COMPLAINING RULES

In restaurants, as elsewhere, the English may moan and grumble to each other about poor service or bad food, but our inhibitions, our social dis-ease, make it difficult for us to complain directly to the staff. We have three very different ways of dealing with such situations, all more or less equally ineffective and unsatisfying.

The Silent Complaint

Most English people, faced with unappetizing or even inedible food, are too embarrassed to complain at all. Complaining would be 'making a scene', 'making a fuss' or 'drawing attention to oneself' in public - all forbidden by the unwritten rules. It would involve a confrontation, an emotional engagement with another human being, which is unpleasant and uncomfortable and to be avoided if at all possible. English customers may moan indignantly to their companions, push the offending food to the side of their plate and pull disgusted faces at each other, but when the waiter asks if everything is all right they smile politely, avoiding eye contact, and mutter, 'Yes, fine, thanks.' Standing in a slow queue at a pub or cafe food counter, they sigh heavily, fold their arms, tap their feet and look pointedly at their watches, but never actually complain. They will not go back to that establishment, and will tell all their friends how awful it is, but the poor publican or restaurateur will never even know that there was anything amiss.

The Apologetic Complaint

Some slightly braver souls will use method number two: the apologetic complaint, an English speciality. 'Excuse me, I'm terribly sorry, um, but, er, this soup seems to be rather, well, not very hot - a bit cold, really...' 'Sorry to be a nuisance, but, um, I ordered the steak and this looks like, er, well, fish...' 'Sorry, but do you think we could order soon? [this after a twenty-minute wait with no sign of any service] It's just that we're in a bit of a hurry, sorry.' Sometimes these complaints are so hesitant and timid, so oblique, and so carefully disguised as apologies, that the staff could be forgiven for failing to grasp the fact that the customers are dissatisfied. 'They look at the floor and mumble, as though they have done something wrong!' an experienced waiter told me.

As well as apologising for complaining, we also tend to apologise for making perfectly reasonable requests: 'Oh, excuse me, sorry, but could we possibly have some salt?' 'Sorry, but could we have the bill now please?' and even for spending money: 'Sorry, could we have another bottle of this, please?' I am guilty of all of these, and I always feel obliged to apologize when I haven't eaten much of my meal: 'Sorry, it was lovely, really, I'm just not very hungry'.

The Loud, Aggressive, Obnoxious Complaint

Finally, there is, as usual, the other side of the social dis-ease coin - English complaint-technique number three: the loud, aggressive, obnoxious complaint. The red-faced, blustering, rude, self-important customer who has worked himself into a state of indignation over some minor mistake - or, occasionally, the patient customer who eventually explodes in genuine frustration at being kept waiting hours for disgusting food.

It is often said that English waiters and other service staff are surly, lazy and incompetent. While there may be some truth in these accusations - we lack the professionalism and servility of some cultures, and cannot bring ourselves to adopt the gushing over-friendliness of others - one should look at the nonsense English servers have to put up with before casting stones. Our inept complaints alone would try the patience of a saint, and our silent ones require an understanding of non-verbal behaviour that would tax many psychologists, particularly if they had to fry chips or carry plates at the same time.

They may seem very different, but the silent or apologetic complaint and the aggressive-obnoxious one are closely related. The symptoms of the English social dis-ease involve opposite extremes: when we feel uncomfortable or embarrassed in social situations, we become either over-polite and awkwardly restrained, or loud, loutish, aggressive and insufferable.

The 'Typical!' Rule Revisited

Our reluctance to complain in restaurants is, however, only partly due to congenital social dis-ease. There is also a wider issue of low expectations. I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter Paul Richardson's observation that the English regard good food as a privilege, not as a right. Unlike other cultures with a tradition of caring about food and culinary expertise, the English on the whole do not have very high expectations when we go to a restaurant, or indeed of the food we prepare at home. With the exception of a handful of foodies, we don't really expect the meals we are served to be particularly good: we are pleased when the food is good, but we do not feel as deeply offended or indignant as other nations when it is mediocre. We may feel a bit annoyed about an overcooked steak or flabby chips, but it is not as though some fundamental human right has been infringed. Mediocre food is the norm.

And it's not just food. Many of my foreign informants, Americans in particular, commented on our inability to complain effectively about incompetence or failings in most other products and services. 'I get the impression,' said one frustrated American, 'that at some deep-down, fundamental level the English just don't really expect things to work properly - do you know what I mean?' 'Yes,' I said, 'especially compared with America. Americans expect good service, value for money, products that do what they're supposed to do - and if their expectations are not met they get pissed off and sue somebody. English people mostly don't expect particularly good service or products, and when their pessimistic assumptions are confirmed they say, "Huh! Typical!"'

'That's it exactly!' said my informant. 'My wife's English and she's always saying that. We go to a hotel and the food's crap and I want to complain and she says, "But hotel food's always crap - what did you expect?" We buy a new dishwasher and they don't deliver it when they said they would and she goes, "Typical!" The train's two hours late and she says, "Oh, isn't that just typical!" I'm like "Well, yes, it is typical and it always will be because you people never DO anything about it except sit around saying "Typical!" to each other.'

He is right. We do tend to treat such failings as though they were acts of God, rather than instances of human incompetence. A delayed train or an undelivered dishwasher is 'typical' in the same way that rain on a Bank Holiday picnic is 'typical'. These inconveniences may be frustrating, but they are normal, familiar, 'only to be expected, I suppose'. And acts of God do not require us to engage in embarrassing confrontations with other humans.

But there is more to it than that. I observed earlier that the quintessentially English 'Typical!' combines huffy indignation with a sense of passive, resigned acceptance, an acknowledgement that things are bound to go wrong, that life is full of little irritations and difficulties and that one must simply put up with it. There is a sort of grudging forbearance, a very English kind of grumpy stoicism, in 'Typical!'. But now I see that there is also almost a perverse sense of satisfaction. When we say 'Typical!' we are expressing annoyance and resentment, but we are also, in some strange way, pleased that our gloomy predictions and cynical assumptions about the ways of the world have been proved accurate. We may have been thwarted and inconvenienced, but we have not been taken unawares. We knew this would happen, we 'could have told you' that the hotel food would be dire, the dishwasher would not be delivered, the train would be delayed, for we in our infinite wisdom know that such is the nature of hotels, dishwashers and trains. We may be useless at complaining, incapable of even the most basic assertiveness, at the mercy of incompetent providers of sub-standard goods, but hey, at least we are omniscient.

That's the way things are. Cars are 'temperamental'; boilers are 'a bit unpredictable'; washing machines 'have off days'; toasters, kettles and doorknobs 'have a bit of tendency to play up'; flush mechanisms 'only work if you do it twice and hold it down the second time - there's a bit of knack to it'; computers can be guaranteed to 'go on the blink' at the wrong moment and wipe out your files; you always choose the slowest queue; deliveries are always late; builders never finish a job properly; you always wait for ages for a bus and then three come along at once; nothing ever works properly; something always goes wrong, and on top of that it's bound to rain. To the English, these are established, incontrovertible facts; they are on a par with two-plus-two-is-four and the laws of physics. We start learning these mantras in our cradles, and by the time we are adults this Eeyorish view of the world is part of our nature.

Unless you fully appreciate this peculiar mindset and its implications you will never truly understand the English. Try repeating the above mantras to yourself every day for about twenty years, and you'll get the idea. Recite them in a resignedly cheerful tone, adding the odd 'mustn't grumble' or 'never mind' or 'better make the best of it', and you will be well on your way to becoming English. Learn to greet every problem, from a piece of burnt toast to World War Three, with 'Typical!', somehow managing to sound simultaneously peeved, stoical and smugly omniscient, and you will qualify as a fully acculturated English person.