How To Deal With Awkward Customers

It has been a 'Watch and Learn' sort of week, this weeks theme demonstrated some ways one might respond to difficult requests from people;

Example 1
I was in the film production office which is full of ant talk; a crew is in Costa Rica, trying to film ants and avoid getting washed away by rain or eaten away by fungus. The Camera Boys still in the office are impressing us with their latest hair and eyebrow styling while simultaneously trying to arrange the next trip, Zena is back on the research. She reported this conclusion from a world authority on myrmecology

Ants will never do a task that is beneath their abilities.

this turns out to be an appropriate response to so many requests


Example 2
before heading over to my cooking job, I decided to try out the 'Exclusive Jamaican Restaurant’ that has recently opened it’s doors in my neighbourhood, it’s way too exclusive to bother with a menu. before I was seated the waitress said
What you wanna eat?

I asked what was being served, she folded her arms, cast her eyes heavenwards and started reciting a list

stew vegetable
fry chicken
goat stew
chicken
salt fish
ox tail ...

I asked what the ox tail was like

It is like chicken



Example 3
I was cooking supper and two little girls were playing shop in my kitchen - they had set up a joke shop;

Shopkeeper girl: Hello Madam, what do you want?

Customer girl: A whoopee cushion and a big nose please

Shopkeeper girl: Anything else?

Customer girl: Chocolate

Shopkeeper girl: It has to be a trick

Customer girl: A chocolate trick please

Head Gear

In Bristol the protracted editing frenzy has finally died down, the editor has moved on to edit someone else’s film, Zena is on an Arctic Ice Tiger Wrestling Safari and Cake Boy is attending a cake-eating marathon on a European ski slope.

This leaves just myself, two Camera Boys, Miss Whiplash and The Director in the house/production office.

The two Camera Boys are young and excitable, they went through an excessive hair phase recently. This spring it seems that it is all about hats; Miss Whiplash is getting concerned about the proliferation of electricity and has been acquiring amulets, I do like cacti but the orgone accumulator is quite bulky and the office is getting a bit cluttered so we are looking for other ways to make her feel happy. Buoyed by their recent success in inventing a new lighting system, the Camera Boys are now developing a special hat for her


This has exposed a curious side of Miss Whiplash; a woman fearless in the face of litigation and all known body fluids. When she’s not looking after the production office she is on the road with her fierce band of rockers, wearing animal-print leotards and feather accessories - this is a woman who shoots flames from her fingernails.

Whiplash has suddenly been plunged into a domestic emergency where she is helping to look after a pile of children. Listening to her account of the weekend I was struck by the difference in our sense of the ultimate Nausea-Inducing-Experience. Hardened by 15 years of life with a man who thinks it’s normal to breed cockroaches to feed to his spiders, I was surprised to hear how upset she was by a few head lice,

I’ve had to spend my weekend combing them out – LIVE NITS!!!

followed by
there’s always a turd on the floor in the morning but I can cope with that!

I’d go for nit-combing over turd-between-the-toes any day – am I alone here?

A Tale of Two Dining Tables

I returned to Bristol earlier than planned last week, just in time to see a bed being removed from the top bedroom which is becoming a second editing suite, the first editing suite was whirring with the business of getting footage prepared for the new editor.

At the bottom of the house a Camera Boy has been busy operating knurling machines and drills, metal shavings crunch underfoot in the the kitchen and the dining table has many tools on it. Carpets and furniture are glittery with the shine of metallic dust - Christmas simply isn't Christmas without it.

In the middle section of the house, The Director was surrounded by women and cake and was getting flummoxed, he’s spent the last several weeks in cars with boys and cameras and has forgotten how women carry on; Zena was in doing lion research, Mrs Moneypenny was getting the government-related paperwork in order and Miss Whiplash was unveiling her current collection of winter clothing. Last year it was floor-sweeping, furry filmstar cloaks, this season she’s channelling her inner intrepid-reporter via cream flak jackets and fur-lined underwear.


On Monday The Director flew to America to talk to people in the offices of National Discovery and I went back to The Smoke...

Last night I was engaged to give a cookery class at a private house in Hampstead, the idea being that I prepare tapas for the hostess and her guests while talking about what I’m doing, they join in with the making if they want, then everyone gets to eat the food - somewhere along the line the original intention was lost.

I arrived and was shown by a maid to the vast kitchen/dining room fitted with a big shiny cooker, double-sized double sinks and impressive granite work tops completely obscured by gadgets; 2 juicers, a breadmaker, a microwave, remote control units, toys, little bottles of condiments, jams, medicines and a footspa, there is not a handspace of work surface visible.

The kitchen is dominated by a massive table, covered with a cloth and decorated all along a wide central section with 6 big vases of flowers, dry fruits stuck on tall stalks, swirls of feathers, glittery pine cones and trails of beads and sequins leaving not quite enough margin around the edge of the table for the 14 place settings already laid out - there’s nowhere to put any food.


My breathless client had forgotten about it being a cookery demonstration. She talked very fast about all the dogs and children that needing taking to vets and flute lessons...

Are you ok to just carry on? Juanita can show you where everything is and help you peel things. I’ve got no idea how many people I’ve invited but they’ll be here in a couple of hours, I should be here just before and we’ll have a little champagne – will the food be done by then?

Superorgasm

Zena joined us in the office this week, a ravishing Swiss scientist who has been doing some research for an upcoming production on complex insect societies. We have given this film the working title of Superorgasm.

The Latin names of many insects trip off Zena’s tongue, but Whiplash and I need the Idiots Guide to Relevant Species that she has made for us and stuck up on the wall.

TV companies like a bit of sensationalism in their programmes so I’m looking for 'stories’ – ideally someone who has had a limb dissolved by ants or people who have had their car stolen by wasps.

A Pink Evening
In my continuing quest to get reacquainted with my neighbourhood, I have spent the evening at my local cinema, it’s the sort of place that serves Spanish brandy and carrot cake, their films are scheduled to start at 8pm but everyone knows that they never start on time and turns up later, the cinema staff wait until they think everybody has arrived before they start the film. Tonight their Japanese pink film season opened with A Lonely Cow Weeps at Dawn which is about a woman who pretends to be a cow.

Actually it was about more than that and managed to be touching as well as ludicrous. I think Jim Jarmusch must get inspiration from this genre.