Working lunch

Is a restaurant ever justified in telling people to get off their laptops?

Ever since I began to earn enough money to pay for restaurant meals, I have enjoyed the experience of going out to eat with myself. In the pre-smartphone era, I would take a book along, try and bag a window table, and graze for a couple of hours while entertaining myself with a spot of people-watching interspersed with reading (with some sneaky eavesdropping on neighbouring tables providing some food for thought!). When I stopped working in an office, and got a bit stir-crazy writing in the solitude of my study, I would often head out with my laptop to do a bit of writing while grabbing a sandwich and coffee. And more recently, it is my smartphone that keeps me occupied, whether it is answering emails, scrolling social media, or just reading a book on my Kindle app.

 

I have done this sort of thing for decades, all over the world, in restaurants both expensive and cheap, fancy and fuss-free, and I have never been made to feel that I was making a nuisance of myself, by working on a laptop, an Ipad, or even my phone. So, it came as a bit of surprise to read on X that a restaurant in Delhi had told a female single diner not to work on her laptop as she waited for her meal. This being X, there were heated opinions on both sides of the debate, with some saying that restaurants had the right to ban laptops and others – like me – saying that such prohibitions should be stated upfront and not sprung on guests after they have ordered. 

 

Of course, restaurants have the right to lay down rules about what guests are allowed (or not allowed) to do. Equally, guests have the right to vote with their feet and not go back to restaurants that make them feel unwelcome. But the more I thought about it, the more the laptop ban made no sense. The argument goes that if you allow people to work on laptops then the ambience of the restaurant changes and it becomes like a co-working place. But given how technology works these days, you can do the same kind of work on an Ipad and a smartphone, so why just discriminate against laptop users? And if you are committed to not letting your restaurant turn into a co-working place, then are you going to police your guests’ smartphone usage and make sure that they are not actually doing any work while they wait for their entrée to be served? 

 

And what would be allowed and disallowed? Is it verboten to answer emails but responding to a Whatsapp message is fine? Is scrolling through Instagram allowed but working on a presentation forbidden? A book is ok but Facebook marketplace is not?

 

Frankly, this makes zero sense. And if you ask me, rather than police the use of laptops at the table, restaurants would be better off ensuring that people use their devices with due consideration to others. I have lost count of the number of times I have sat at a restaurant while people at the next table watched video shorts or listened to music clips without the benefit of headphones. Instead of banishing laptops, how about we prohibit noise pollution like this? 

 

Now, that’s a ban I could get on board with. 

 

Keep it simple

Why do hotels insist on investing in TV systems that their guests find impossible to master?


So, among the list of demands the Rolling Stones lay down when they go on tour these days is that the hotel staff must leave detailed written instructions on how to work the TV system. I couldn't help but laugh when I read this.

How the mighty have fallen! (Or do I mean just grown old?) There was a time when the only use the Rolling Stones had for a TV set was to wreck it completely as they trashed hotel room after hotel room on their many tours around the world.

But now that all of them are either in or approaching their 70s, those days of drugs, sex, and rock and roll are long gone. Now it's just rock and roll, and a few hours of downtime in front of the television, watching the news or their favourite series, or maybe even a bit of sport, to calm down after the adrenalin rush of playing large stadiums full of roaring fans.

You can just picture it, can't you? Mick Jagger comes back to his hotel room, all hot and sweaty, having done his best Tina Turner impression yet.  His slips into the shower (avert your eyes discreetly now!), comes out in his bathrobe, and picks up the remote hoping to catch the news on the BBC.

The TV comes on. But instead of showing one of the channels, it says Menu, with a bewildering array of options listed underneath. He finally scrolls down to TV and presses what he thinks is 'Ok' on his remote. Nothing happens for a few excruciating minutes. The the TV begins to show him all the movies that he can order and charge to his room. He presses 'Exit'. Nothing happens.

By now I am guessing that Mick is ready to revert to his bad old days and trash the TV along with the room. But he draws on the restraint his 70-plus years on the planet have taught him, picks up the phone and asks for some help. A few minutes later, a young whippersnapper arrives in the room, supercilious contempt writ large all over his face, and shows the mighty Stone just how it's done.

It is at this point in my fantasy that I stop chortling and start steaming. Because the scene I have just described is exactly what happens to me in four hotels out of five on my travels.

It seems to me that the golden rule of hoteliering is that the more fancy the TV system, the more difficult it will be to navigate. I last encountered one such system a week ago at a very swanky hotel, which was perfect in all respects but the TV technology.

The television system was controlled through an Ipad that seemed to have a mind of its own. It took me a good ten minutes before I could crawl through all the clutter of options to access the TV channels to watch a bit of news.

Later that night, as I settled down to watch a DVD before going to bed, I came up against an unexpected obstacle. I could not find the DVD player.

And yet, I knew that it did exist, given that its remote control was lying right in front of me. I looked high and low, opening drawer after drawer of the TV console. But no luck.

After 10 minutes of this fruitless search, I finally gave up and called for help. A smiling young lady arrived a few minutes later. I explained that I could not find the DVD player. Ah, she said, walking across to the writing table in the opposite corner of the room, and opening the bottom drawer, "Here it is!"

And how would I operate it from the couch in front of the television, I asked. I could hardly jog across the room every time I wanted to press pause.

Oh, you don't need to do that, she said. In fact, you don't even need to use the remote control at all. You can just operate it with the Ipad from anywhere in the room.

With the same IPad that had driven me insane an hour ago? No thanks. I made my excuses and went to bed with a book.

So, why do you think hotels do this? What is the point of investing millions in a TV system that just drives your guests bonkers every time they try and use it. Any system that requires someone to give you a 20-minute tutorial on how to operate it, is simply not the best choice for a hotel chain. (Their guests really do have better things to do than try and master a system that they will only use for a couple of days.)

At the end of a long day, when you are looking forward to unwind by watching an episode of The Good Wife or the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the last thing you want is to have to summon help to get the TV working (especially since, more often than not, help will arrive long after your show is over). And that is just as true of us ordinary mortals as it is of the Rolling Stones.

So, Sir Mick, sorry about taking the mickey out of you. "Detailed written instructions on how to use the television system" sounds just about right to me.

The writing is on the, er, screen…

There is no denying the convenience of the e-book but it’s the real thing that still gives me a thrill

I’ve entered the world of the e-book rather late, but ever since I bit the bullet and downloaded the Kindle app on my iPad and Mac, I’ve gone just a little bit crazy. I stay up late trawling Amazon for titles by my favourite authors, buying a Kindle version, marveling at the speed of the download, and at how – wait for this! – I can read them on both my iPad and Mac, syncing them so the book opens where I last left off reading on either machine.

I know, I know, it’s all a bit sad. The wide-eyed wonder at the marvels of modern technology. The compulsive downloading of books with the feverish urgency of an addict. But tell me this, how could I possibly resist when I found the new titles of two of my favourite authors on Amazon just before I set off on holiday? They still hadn’t hit the shops in India. But there they were on Amazon’s shelves: Donna Leon’s The Golden Egg and Jodi Picoult’s The Storyteller. The freshly-minted covers were gleaming up at me, whispering ‘Buy me, buy me NOW.’

And so, gentle reader, I did.

You cannot imagine my smugness (or perhaps you can) when I set out on my travels with two brand-new titles nesting inside my Kindle app. This was brilliant, I told myself. Counting my previous downloads, I had five books on tap – and all within a tiny gadget that weighed about 650 grams. No more weighing down of suitcases with tomes I had to get through on vacation. I could finally do that glossy-magazine thing of travelling light. Score!

But then I made the mistake of wandering into a bookstore on the first day of my vacation. And there it was: the new Donna Leon book, all mysterious black and glamorous gold, mocking me from the shop window. Ha, it said, don’t you wish you had held out for the real thing?

And you know what? I kind of did. Now that the actual, physical book was in front of me, I wished nothing more than to possess it. It would join the 16 (or is it 17?) Donna Leons lined up on my bookshelf at home, and live happily every after in my study where I could pull it out occasionally, re-read the odd chapter (or hell, re-read the entire book) whenever I felt like it. I would feel its heft in my hands, the pages would whisper as I turned them, and I could breathe in that new-book smell, more evocative than jasmine or lily of the valley.

Of course, I couldn’t possibly do that now. The book had been downloaded on my iPad, I had already started reading it on the flight. How could I possibly justify buying the same book twice (albeit in different forms) to my frugal middle-class brain?

But that night, as I lay in bed with my iPad, scrolling the pages rapidly to get to the meat of the plot, I couldn’t help but wonder if I would have been happier reading this in print.

Yes, there is a certain convenience to reading your books on an e-device of some sort (so long as you remember to keep it charged). And e-books are certainly a blessing for people like me who live in small apartments that are already overflowing with far too many (if there can be such a thing) books. And who can deny that there is a certain environmental argument for not felling more trees to produce paper on which books (no matter how execrable) can be printed.

I see all that on a rational level. And now that I have discovered the delights – and the convenience of Amazon – I will certainly be lightening my load with e-books whenever I head out on holiday. But that said, there’s nothing quite like the feeling of holding a brand-new book by one of your favourite authors in your hands, and plunging right in.