"Excuse me...Excuse me!" called a particularly lively gentleman one day as I walked through the restaurant on my way to another table. I acknowledged his pleas and came over once I had put the food I was carrying down at the correct table and made sure they had everything they needed. As I approached, I noticed raucous laughter emanating from his table. "How can I help you, Sir?" "'ere, he said with his thick Northern accent, isn't a lime a baby lemon that just ain't gone yella yet?" he said, and as he did so the table of colleagues he was sat with burst into fits of laughter and mockery.
This story leads me on to my second major lesson of being in this industry - politely correcting someone who has said something so outrageously wrong while keeping the utmost professional manner instead of telling them what you are REALLY thinking at that moment. I took a small but deeper than usual breath, made the most professional face I could muster, and said "No, sir, a lime is a completely different citrus fruit, and is not an unripe lemon".
"Why does no one believe me!?" he announced, as several of his colleagues shouted, "Told you!" "And she knows!" in retort to his plight. "I'm telling you all a lime is a baby lemon that just ain't yella yet, that's why it's green!" He said with unequivocal belief, at this point, I had already learned that humiliating your patrons wasn't the best way to go, so I politely excused myself from the table and made a point of vociferously cleaning down my workstation instead. This debate did indeed rage on for a good 30-45 minutes longer until finally someone did what we millennials do best and asked google. Mr Lemon as he shall henceforth be known still refused to admit defeat, but I think by this point it may have been a strategy to somehow save face especially as most of the section of the restaurant had tuned in by now and his faux pas had become somewhat public.
As the gaggle of colleagues finally left to head back to work after their lunch break I was left to wonder whether the entire episode that had played out in front of me that lunchtime was just a loveable goof, or a damning indictment of my country's education system... little did I know that Mr lemon formed the mere tip of a rather ill-informed future iceberg.
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