I had the unfortunate experience of eating at the Wetherspoons in Leatherhead recently. While the prices were typically inexpensive, the food and the service can only be described as cheap.

I first started to feel uneasy when, after ordering, my food arrived at my chosen table before I did. There is a not-so-fine line between quick service and reheating a cold dish. Not wanting to add to the rather awkward atmosphere that this created, I accepted the meal. After realising that ‘dilapidated’ is actually an adjective one can use in conjunction with ‘jacket potato’, I pushed my food around my plate for a while and reasoned that it was too cheap to complain about, besides, the whole meal cost what the free glass of wine costs in some bars.

Once my food had re-cooled my friend’s food arrived. Having counted the number of omissions that differentiated my friends’ meal from what he had ordered, we realised that it was probably someone else’s food. We summoned the waiter/barman/cashier/cleaner and asked him to please deal with our problem. He promptly and politely removed the cheese-and-bacon-burger-without-cheese-or-bacon, thereby lulling us into a false sense of food security.

The burger returned, complete with cheese. The problem was far clearer to our party than it was to the waiter/barman/cashier/cleaner, so we gingerly pointed it out to him and he whisked it away again. When the same burger returned for the third time, the fact that it now had cheese and bacon on it was irrelevant. A third member of our party had seen the waiter/barman/cashier/cleaner pick up the bun from one dish and swap it with another, rearranging the meals so that they more accurately resembled what had been ordered. Needless to say, the multi-talented waiter was not what I would describe as an obsessive hand-washer.

The conversation continued as follows;
Paying Customer; ‘You just rearranged the food on this plate and that person’s plate with your dirty hands’.
Waiter/barman/cashier/cleaner: ‘No I didn’t’.
Paying Customer, ‘I saw you’.
Waiter/barman/cashier/cleaner: ‘Are you saying there’s something wrong with my hands?’
Paying Customer; ‘Yes, they’re filthy. I want to speak to the manager’.
Waiter/barman/cashier/cleaner; ‘I am the manager’.
Paying Customer; ‘You can’t be’.
Waiter/barman/cashier/cleaner/manager; ‘I am’.
Paying Customer; ‘I don’t want to see that burger back on this table again’.
Waiter/barman/cashier/cleaner/manager; ‘I’ll get you a refund then’.

At that stage I started to really look for the poorer aspects of the restaurant. To their credit, this Wetherspoons outlet certainly ticks all the right boxes; their disabled access is excellent, the interior is roomy, the ‘typical English pub’ vibe is accurate, there is ample parking and the prices are good. Main meals range between four and six Pounds and many meals come with a free drink. Clearly there is more to restaurateuring than box ticking, and putting one person in charge of the till, pulling pints, taking orders, serving food, cleaning tables, customer services, delegation and plate arranging does not seem to be a recipe for success.