I respect it. I’m not looking to be served by an outright asshole, but I’m no fan of servility or unnecessary deference. As long as he gets the job done, he’s welcome at the table any time. Hell, join us for the meal, make light conversation about the history of the place. It’d be memorable.

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this in another post, but I was in Paris one afternoon and stopped off at one of the Hard Rock Cafes - I like the memorabilia, and rather than buy fridge magnets from my travels, I try and get a Hard Rock Cafe shirt. Anyway…

The waiter comes up, and I’m battling through in basic French, trying to be careful and not be another tourist that made an arse of it, and generally doing my absolute best to not annihilate the beautiful language I was trying to converse in.

I ended one of the sentences with “je suis desole, mon Français est vraiment mauvais”, a crude bit of self-awareness and a nod to an understanding that it wasn’t perfect.

The waiter says in accented English “yes, your French is a bit shit”

I laughed and appreciated the honesty; he laughed because he got to rip the piss out of a Brit; and we all lived happily ever… except for my bank account, because fuck me drinks in the city centre we’re pricey.

Anyway, I like staff who are direct and don’t fuck about.

Our families thing was finding hard rock cafe t shirts from places that very definitely do not have an actual hard rock cafe. I think my dad’s “Hard Rock Cafe Bujumbura”(capital city of Burundi) is the winner.

Brilliant. I never thought of collecting comedy knock-off stuff like that!

If I had the time and effort, it would probably be quite a good business idea too, particularly if mixed in with geek culture. Hard Rock Cafe Alderaan; Hard Rock Cafe Pallet Town; Hard Rock Cafe D’ni; Hard Rock Cafe Winterfell etc etc.