Baroque Incident

In light of the fact that my Berlin photos finally worked like I wanted them to, I'll take a short moment to explain the Baroque incident.

During my mother's visit, she, Sonia and I went one evening to Baroque, a very fancily decorated restaurant that (probably) has the best crepes in the entire city. There is one waiter there who is strange. He speaks (or at least speaks parts of) several languages, and comes off as somewhat uppity. We ordered our crepes and tea; banana-schoko w/ ice cream crepe for me, banana-schoko for my mom, and sugar-cinnamon for Sonia. The waiter confirmed the orders and left. We got our tea, everything's going good, a waitress (the dumb one who has screwed up my order and other people's orders on many previous occasions) comes over with a crepe and introduces it, all I hear being "....-schoko mit Eis?" I immediately raise my hand because I was the only one who ordered a crepe that included a combination of chocolate and ice cream. I get the crepe, she leaves, and I look at the crepe, realizing only after a few seconds that there is a lack of banana. There are no bananas.

Okay, so, I tell Sonia and my mother, we decide there has been a mistake, and we flag down the first waiter (I will from now on refer to him as such). I tell him in a friendly manner that I ordered a banana-schoko crepe and got a schoko-only crepe. However, because I was hungry, I would still eat the crepe in front of me, but would not pay for the banana-schoko. He looks at me for a few seconds and then says (in German but now translated), rather aggressively, "So what's the problem?" I repeat: wrong crepe, but I'll still eat it (therefore saving them the ingredients and time needed to make a new, correct crepe), but that I would pay for what I got, not what I ordered. Still in nice, passive manner.

Normally, waiters would be thankful for the customer's understanding and willingness to eat what was given them. This guy wasn't. He says, still aggressively "So what do you want me to do? We can make you a new one. What do you want?" I (once again) repeat that that won't be necessary. He gets pissy and walks away with a huff and a roll of his eyes, then turns half way toward us and says (rather loudly, I might add), that "Okay, so my colleague made a mistake; SHE'S ONLY HUMAN."

Sonia, my mother and I sit in stunned silence. The women at the next table over are looking at us and whispering. The three of us uncomfortably shrug it off and keep on with our talking, still not able to understand what just happened. How can he talk to a customer like that, especially when I wasn't even being rude or difficult?

A few minutes later, Mr. Jerkface (as I will now call him) literally charges at the table with his little computer-pad thing and says "See, now look here, what you are eating now is, in fact, what she" he points to my mom "ordered. You are eating HER crepe." The three of us look at him, eyes wide, and I say calmly, "No, because she ordered a banana-schoko crepe. Without ice cream." Silence for a few seconds, and then Mr. Jerkface once again spins away in a huff of anger and says loudly, "Forget it. Just forget it." After this I felt sick to my stomach -- seriously, and wasn't able to finish my crepe. No one has EVER spoken to me like that before, not in a public place, not ever. And I, as I saw it, had done nothing to deserve such a blast of rage.

Oddly enough, when he brought the other two crepes, he handed Sonia hers and called her "mademoiselle", and wished my mom "guten appetite". When he came to take the plates away he once again called Sonia mademoiselle, and asked my mother how her crepe had been. After the second incident, Mr. Jerkface was polite enough to Sonia and my mom, but didn't look me in the eye for the rest of our stay, not even when I paid for the three of us. Possibly he realized that he had been mistaken from the beginning. Maybe he felt like an idiot after accusing me of screwing things up, when it is in fact his job to keep things in order.

I was willing to overlook the first outburst, and just leave the restaurant if he ended up being my waiter, or ask for another one. But after the second outburst... I'm never going back. Which is a pity, because it's a really nice place with good crepes, and it's open until 3 A.M. I've also recently learned that I'm not the only one who has had attitude from him; and that includes friends of ours who have lived in Landau, or the surrounding area, for years.

So don't support the pretty restaurant that hires jerks. Wait to get your crepe fill from the cool guys who set up shop at the festivals and fairs.

The end.