Last Wednesday I went down to Barcelona to go to the theater with a group of friends, and we had a horrible experience. We had bought three tickets, because one of us could not confirm that he would come until the last minute, due to those things in life that can happen to all of us, but in the end, what a joy, all four of us were able to go. We went to the man with a little hat, a well-trimmed beard and a facility for releasing nineteenth-century witticisms who controlled access to the room, standing next to the pivot that held the red velvet cord. I showed him the three entrances and lo and behold, he didn’t let all of us in. That with three reserved seats only three people could enter, he said. That everything was reserved and that they couldn’t rearrange the seats to fit one more, and that if we wanted to be together we would return, paying again, to another session another day! That awful!
The group was shocked. From the initial stupor we turned to indignation and anger, we said four things well said and put a couple of dots over a pair of i’s, but we ended up, resigned, in a taxi; one looking on the smartphone for something open and decent where to go to eat something; another, taking charge of recording the outrage on the social networks of the theater in question. I, my gaze unfocused, lost in the night of the city through the windows of the car, noticed how, suddenly, a veil dissolved inside me and a new clarity took over my mind, waking me from my reverie: This doesn’t just happen in the theater guys! I yelled. The civilized world is crumbling!
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Scenes from other places and other moments crowded into my mind, like flashes, with a different brightness than they had until then, drawing a new reality: I saw how a couple of weeks before I had had to pay in advance for one-way plane tickets and back to a book fair in Cantabria, not knowing if he would have the flu that day. I saw how I had to give my credit card details when booking a hotel room for that stay, even though I wasn’t sure I was really going to sleep there that night, with the BBK festival just a stone’s throw away on those same dates. . It’s more! Now he remembered not having been able to access the Bilbao festival site without a subscription because he had not been able to reserve it without paying. How is one supposed to know, three months from now, if that night in July is going to be more craving for BBK in Bilbao, Cruïlla in Barcelona or Mad Cool in Madrid?
Suddenly, I remembered all the times I had bought tickets for the movies or for children’s shows, concerts, monologues… in advance. I even saw myself giving permission to the gas pump to verify that there really was a balance of 20 euros in my account that I had intended to put in the Ibiza’s tank, that same afternoon, before actually pouring it; or pay for a trifle on eBay or Amazon whatever its price, a thousand times, days before receiving it at home, and without knowing if it would meet my expectations.
I realized, in that sort of epiphany, that the last redoubt of total freedom, of respect for spontaneity, of common sense!, was in restaurants. The restaurant area was the only area in which one could still reserve for four and wait for service for six or eight, or block a table to eat, so that no one else could occupy it, and then not show up, without suffering no type of compensation; Avoiding an appointment in a restaurant had never had consequences of any kind, nor had setting a specific time for that appointment and showing up an hour late: in them, unlike the dentist’s office or the notary’s office, a he had always had the right to demand the same kind of attention as if he had been punctual.
The great restaurants were born as a response to the need of aristocratic chefs to find a life in France after the guillotine left them without bosses. And here we are, 234 years later, behaving like dramatic queens, demanding from the union a form of treatment close to submission and homage that does not occur in any other sector of activity. What happens in the restaurant sector, not having to give any type of advance or financial guarantee when reserving a service, is an anomaly, an exception. Would anyone dare to defend the right to order three bespoke suits from three different tailors, or three different pieces of furniture from three cabinetmakers, without giving any down payment, and, once done, decide which one to keep and leave the other two without? pay? It’s a lot like making reservations at three restaurants at the same time and deciding which one you go to at the last minute. If this had never happened, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
And not. Do not worry. This is not meant to curtail your right to be spontaneous, nor to limit your freedom to change your mind or get sick. This goes from understanding that a restaurant is a company that needs to be financially viable to continue to exist. Of that, and of fulfilling oneself with the commitments that one freely assumes. Of the nearly 83,900 restaurants and food stalls that were in Spain as of January 1, 2022, only a minority have advance payment or cancellation policies with costs, and these usually have a Michelin star or an average price per the cover above 70 euros.
If you don’t think it’s reasonable to be asked to make a commitment that is limited to paying a part of what you promise to consume later, go to any of the other thousands. But it is only a matter of time before what surprises and outrages many today ends up being the norm.
2023-07-14 03:27:30
#buy #theater #tickets #pay #restaurant #advance
