{"id":803,"date":"2008-03-15T00:12:42","date_gmt":"2008-03-14T23:12:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/?p=803"},"modified":"2008-03-16T16:04:36","modified_gmt":"2008-03-16T15:04:36","slug":"this-isn%e2%80%99t-just-any-gin-tonic-and-glass-of-red-wine%e2%80%a6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/?p=803","title":{"rendered":"This isn\u2019t just any gin & tonic and glass of red wine\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here at the Hotel Pas bon march\u00e9<\/em> we like to think of our guests as king. However, that rules out the fairer sex, so we really like to think of guests as royalty. Of course, most of us associate royalty with wealth, exorbitance, and so on and so forth. You get what you pay for, royalty know this almost as well as Michael Jackson does when he is looking to purchase a new vase. <\/p>\n

So that\u2019s why, here at the Hotel Pas bon march\u00e9<\/em>, we have to afford our customers the luxuries that they expect from a \u00a3200 per night mid-week stay in our fine establishment. We don\u2019t skimp, we don\u2019t save and we pass our costs along the line, all the way to the final arbiter in the equation: the customer. If they end up paying through the nose for our services, who cares? They\u2019re royalty and they can afford it, right? Well, that sounds fine and dandy, however we\u2019re a business, so of course we skimp and save. But we still pass our costs on to our loyal guests.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why we like to charge \u00a320.78 for a gin & tonic and a glass of red wine. Royalty pay that kind of price. And in that price, you\u2019ll find our service charge of \u00a32.03 added automatically for your convenience. I mean, you wouldn\u2019t want to have to go through the process of working out the tip we required: our service is such that it deserves a sizable tip. Of course, the service charge is optional, but we\u2019re not going to tell you that up front because that might mean less money passes from you to us, and that\u2019s the name of the game: we want your money. <\/p>\n

But this isn\u2019t just any old gin, we don\u2019t appreciate references to current prime ministers and nor do the real royals when they find themselves in need of a place to rest their weary heads after a hard day watching or playing polo. No sir, royalty needs to remember the Empire: we serve only the finest Bombay Sapphire Gin<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Our red wine isn\u2019t any old red wine and it\u2019s not from M&S either. We choose to serve the smoothest C\u00f4tes du Rh\u00f4ne<\/a> in 250ml glasses. At least that\u2019s what we on print the receipt you receive as a souvenir of your stay with us. Who knows if we are serving cheap table wine or the fine vintage that you believe you\u2019re sipping? Let\u2019s face it, we\u2019re in the money making market, so we\u2019ll probably have sourced the cheapest C\u00f4tes du Rh\u00f4ne that we can find. It\u2019s psychological, probably.<\/p>\n

We do all this with a smile. We take your money, your \u00a310 note, we go to our point of sale and return with the receipt, politely tell you \u201cthis is not a \u00a3100 note sir, it\u2019s a \u00a310 note, your drinks cost \u00a320.78\u201d. We\u2019ve done this many times, we know the reaction we\u2019re going to get, we know you\u2019re a comedian; even Scottish comedians are amongst our most humorous guests. We should start a comedy club; it could a money spinner. But we\u2019re not into spinning money, we\u2019re interested in taking money from our guests, so that\u2019s why we can get away with charging what amounts to \u00a310 per drink. Every round is a winner, our bar manager loves it. Ka-ching squared.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s humour all the way, because we know from experience that you were simply winding us up when you gave us a \u00a310 and expected change. You\u2019re royalty after all, you\u2019re loaded \u2013 it\u2019s our job to exploit that fact and make you part with your cash because you yourself, you don\u2019t care. It\u2019s only money, you have plenty of it, you must do, you\u2019re staying in our establishment and we charge \u00a3200 per night mid-week.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Craig stayed at a major hotel in Jermyn Street. It was nice. He\u2019s not royalty, but was surprised about many aspects of the service. Breakfast was a fine motion of dining excellence: cooked fresh, the presentation was impeccable and tidy. The plate was heated to a decent temperature to ensure that the waitress burnt her fingers and the bacon was kept hot for as long as possible. <\/p>\n

However the dirty napkin let the Executive Chef’s branded service down somewhat. The warmed bread that was offered as toast was not becoming. I\u2019m sure the Executive Chef would cringe had he seen the serving mechanism for the butter and Flora \u2013 they were supplied in delightful little white tubs, carefully shaped with a fine lining of foil on top: these are little containers that are so popular outside of royal circles. Those containers aren’t the finest bone china, no, they’re made of plastic. And let\u2019s not get started about the ironing board in the room \u2013 the one that would not stay up. With no hand-pumps in the bar, this hotel will not make it into any CAMRA<\/a> guides.<\/p>\n

Technorati Tags: expensive round of drinks<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here at the Hotel Pas bon march\u00e9 we like to think of our guests as king. However, that rules out the fairer sex, so we really like to think of guests as royalty. Of course, most of us associate royalty with wealth, exorbitance, and so on and so forth. You get what you pay for, … Continue reading This isn\u2019t just any gin & tonic and glass of red wine\u2026<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}