“Couples Only”

I was at Apache last evening, a local pub, and I ran into what seemed to me (at least initially) to be some pretty strange behavior. Let me explain.

Firstly, I’d gone there with a girl. (No, that isn’t the strange thing!)

Now, the upper floor at Apache has two sections, which I shall refer to as the Outside and the Inside. For some unfathomable reason, the management running the place has decided to reserve the Inside strictly for couples. There’s a board saying “Couples Only” at the entrance to this section. (Okay, that’s strange all right, but it still isn’t what I’m talking about.)

So the two of us have just climbed up the stairs, onto the upper floor, and are looking for a place to sit – in the Outside section – when the waiter tries to usher us into the Inside. “Sir, couples ka andar hai. (Couple seating is inside)”. But Inside looked a little too gaudy and the music was too loud, so we decided to ignore the waiter’s “recommendation” and found ourselves a table on the Outside. A table for four; it was the smallest one available.

Soon the waiter attending to our table arrives and repeats what the earlier one had said, “Andar baito, couples bahar allowed nahin. (Sit inside, couples are not allowed outside.)” Not allowed? This seemed like a little too much. As far as I understood, the board “Couples Only” implied “Only couples can sit here” and not “Couples can sit only here”.

I tried to explain this to the waiter, but he didn’t really seem to get the difference. I was half-tempted to tell him, “We’re NOT a couple. We’re just friends!” But I have a feeling that would have been a waste too. However, I have a penchant for stubbornness, so I finally managed to convince him that the music inside was too loud and thus we would be sitting outside, thank you very much and if he had a problem with it he could go complain to his grandfather.

After he left, I thought about how strange this all was. But within seconds I realized that there was a simple reason that the management had ordered the waiters to ensure that all couples sit inside. A very rational one at that.

The clientèle of the place were mainly male. Consequently, the Inside was almost empty – only one or two tables occupied – and the Outside almost full. The two of us had plopped ourselves down at a table for four. Thus, by sitting Outside, we had denied place to some other group of stags, who could not sit Inside anyway. Assuming that the situation remains like this – Outside full, Inside empty – we had effectively taken up six seats!

You don’t have to be an Economics Major to figure out that that isn’t the best outcome for the pub.

At Least He Was Honest

It’s time to get back to blogging -- even if all I have to offer you today is a small snippet.

The other day, a bunch of us had gone to one of these small dhabas next to our office. The food in our office cafeteria is unworthy even to puke out -- so such places run a thriving business. We sat down at an empty (and surprisingly clean) table and tried to decide on what to order. (This, most of you’ll will agree, is an NP-Complete problem.)

Finally we settled on an order and summoned one of the waiters -- a young lad of about 12. He hurried to our table, pen and pad in hand, looking ready to jot down anything we could throw at him. One of us started calling out our order, one dish after the other. He didn’t put any of it to paper but instead, I could see each name was adding a further ounce of confusion and befuddlement to his face. After about four dishes he was completely lost.

“See,” I started kindly. “You have a pen and paper. Why don’t you just write down the order? There’s no way you’ll retain the entire thing in your mind.”

He just gives me a shyish smile.

“What’s the matter?”, I asked.

“Sir, I don’t know how to write!”

The mystery of why he was toting a pen and paper around may never be solved.