waiter there is a fly in my soup

Waiter, there is a fly in my soup

By David Verveer

The title of this post is slightly misleading, as in my story the fly and the soup did not have any physical contact, nor was a waiter involved, only a manager of the bistro where we dined last Friday night.

The reason for giving this story a misleading name is mainly due to the fact that my friends told me that only stories above the belt are permitted, and as I like to make everybody happy, I replaced the location of button from the Jeans trousers wore by the Owner (or perhaps his representative) from his logical place on the trousers to the fish bowl which our friends consumed.

I need to mention that the food served was excellent and very tasty, the service polite and efficient, but something was very wrong, which spoiled slightly our culinary happiness, because how does one inform, or don't inform the unfortunate manager that the button on his trousers (sometimes called fly) was undone, I don't think there is any nice way to inform him of this unfortunate situation, and I repeat, the food was tasty without any complains.

Of course, when we noticed it for the first time we smiled, but decided to keep quiet; hoping that one of his waiters or waitresses would inform him discretely on his unfortunate attire, but nothing happened, he kept passing our table, we tried not to stare (which is very difficult when you discovered it) hoping that nothing worse would happen, and after having dined, we paid and left, ignoring the critical situation, but I keep on wondering, did we act correctly, was it morally justified to keep quiet? Should we have approached this gentleman and told him to bugle up, or give him a hint, something like, Sir, your necktie button is open, or ask him, if he does not feel the draft, but in our Israeli mingle of population, you never know if sarcasm and hints would be understood, and you might get thrown out the restaurant for insulting the manager on duty.

As I said, the food was excellent, but I don't think we will go back to that place very soon, who knows what might happen next time.