You'll Never Please 'em all.

A newly checked-in guest presents at the restaurant for dinner.

From Singapore, with limited English, he is a specialist tradesman, here to perform one task for his company.

Dismissively sneering at the menu he instead demands to eat some obscure dish from his homeland.

It is the Head Chef's first night, and a particularly busy one too.

Cooking an off-menu dish is quite an undertaking.  It upsets the rhythm of the kitchen, as nothing is prepared, laid out, defrosted, etc.

However, the Head Chef, a Chinese, says he can do it.

As the guest strolls back through the reception area, Mine Host, puffed up with pride at the ability of the staff to meet seemingly all demands, enquires of the gentleman how was his dinner?

The reply was most abrupt:
"Too slow, in Singapore that usually served in two minutes."
The guest then stumps off unhappily to his room.

So Mine Host adds Forty Dollars to the guest's dinner bill.

Thus continues life behind the bar...

There are actually Three different forces you know

The seemingly complete and total cluelessness of journalists about military matters ("army stuff") is one of the sadder aspects of the output of the modern university journalism courses.

 

Anyone who is aware there is an Army, a Navy, and an Air Force is ahead of many journalists.

 

Examples abound of instances where journalists can't tell a machine-gun from a mortar, a Sergeant from an Admiral, or a submarine from an aircraft carrier.  (If you think I'm joking, you need to pay more attention to newspapers/TV)

 

But they can still tell the Army from the Navy, can't they?   Who knows, but try this one:

 

 

Favourite part of the recent International Fleet Review?

For Mine Host this was in the ABC TV coverage, which at one point ran a short magazine style story on "Women in the Navy", consisting entirely of footage showing ladies dressed in the uniform of the Royal Australian Air Force.

Screenshot taken by Mine Host, during ABC-TV "Women in the Navy" clip.

President Obama proves he CAN seal the Border!

The borders of U.S. National Parks that is.

In what will become the defining image of the USA for 2013, the world is being treated to the spectacle of open air monuments being barricaded off and placed under armed guard.....

..... to "save money".

It would make as little sense to barricade off telegraph poles, and station armed guards around 'em.

The real damage?  To the image of the US National Parks Service.



American Taxpayers paid for this



Instead they get this

Nobody Tells Him to Wear Pants

A chef is detected chronically failing to wash his hands.

By the Health Inspector.  Who brings this to the attention of the Exec Chef.

The culprit, whose finely tuned radar has detected that he may have just brought some serious boss heat down on himself, is summoned to the office for a "no-coffee" discussion.

This sub-continental's reason for not washing his hands, ever?

"It's not my fault, you've never run a training course on washing hands, so how would I know what to do?"  (Oh brother....)

Mine Host (already clicking the computer screen through to hireachef.com or somesuch) enquires somewhat acidly of this goose when did he last attend a training course that showed how to put your pants on?

This was too oblique, or too deep, for the sub-continental.  The response was a blank stare.

Mine Host followed up with a supplementary question as to when had been the most recent training course that showed how to get food into your mouth?

This at least brought a quizzical grunt of incomprehension.

Mine Host then delivered his final line of the interview;
"Well, you do manage to eat food don't you?"  

Zero Times Each Day

Sometimes a stopped clock isn't even right twice a day.

The Australian deep south is a foreign place.  They do things differently there.  Just how differently sometimes has to be seen to be believed.

For part of the year they change the clocks to a different time.  This can be quite a shock if you encounter it, for it is akin to discovering that the sun has turned around and is setting in the east.

However this act of dickheadsmanship thousands of miles away in the deep south has little to no impact at the Wayside Tavern.

Some people have never encountered it, but those of us who are more well read, or well travelled, have learned of this clock changing.

This time changing  has many names, the most polite name used in the Wayside Tavern is "Brokeback Mountain Time" a most apt phrase.

Aficionados of this clock changing may wish to reflect upon this terminology, and the degree of esteem with which they are held by the working population.



Yesterday the morning staff arrived for work an hour early, without knowing it!

They'd taken their time from the display on their mobile phones.  In an act of supreme incompetence Telstra (the telephone company) had brought forward the time by an hour.  No reason, except that in the deep south, irrelevant to Queensland, the clocks had been brought forward by an hour.

Telstra (not ever likely to be a contender for "smartest corporation") changed their time signal in mighty Queensland, just because some King Canute type in Victoria imagines they can "save" daylight by doing so!

The Six staff who start the day off had never encountered the concept of Time being Tinkered with, are totally puzzled by it, now think Telstra are complete idiots (they got that part right) and will never again take for granted what they see on their screens or phones (this lesson is not necessessarily a bad thing)

Turns out none of these wallies owns a wristwatch ("a whaaat?")