Turning water into wine.

We went out for meal last night to a restaurant under the TBWA office, swanky place – I even put a shirt on.

We got our bottle of red but the first few sips seemed slightly odd, the wine was really watery.. Not being Gilly Goulden or Oz Clarke we weren’t quite sure what to make of it. We asked our waitress who admitted to knowing nothing about wine and that it was all about different grapes and different years, or something like that… “Really”… So we tried again managing to get through a glass each, but we still weren’t convinced. We got the wine waiter over who approached our table proclaiming:
“How are we? The Shiraz is very light isn’t it” Clearly having been tipped off by our waitress.
“Well we’d like you to taste it, this seems like it’s half water”
“Oh no that’s ok I’ve just tried another bottle and it’s ok”
“Right… Well try this one”
“Really it’s OK, it is quite light.”
Right mate, you’re beginning to wind me up “Try this one; there’s no alcohol in it”
So the ‘Wine Waiter’ gets himself a glass, gives it sniff and tastes it.
“Oh, that’s not right, it’s like it’s got lots of water in it”
“Hallelujah, we’re not mad, and yes we’ve been telling you that for the last 5 minutes.”

What annoyed me the most about the whole episode was that we had to ask him 3 times to try it and he still protested when finally agreeing to.

Completely unrelated, but there was a sign up behind the till saying “You will be fired if you say no to a customer”. Must be a great place to work.