The Learning Curve

If only she had a helping hand, Sue could surely get to grips with the new way of doing things

- Gabrielle Mullarkey

And then I’ll have the seared tuna with cherry toms and a side of chunky chips,’ says the unfortunate-looking man with hair growing out of his ears. In bushels. He pauses. ‘Did you take all that down?’

‘Oh... Yes.’

‘Only, you didn’t enter anything on your tablet.’

Gosh, he’s right. I was so transfixed by his hairy ears, I forgot to tippy-tap his order into my ‘handheld ordering system’. This is Dom, the restaurant manager’s, latest bright idea, getting the waiting staff to take orders on a computer tablet instead of writing in an ‘old-fashioned’ notebook.

The hairy eared man repeats his order slowly, and rather sarcastically, it must be said.

As I hurry to the kitchen, Dom wanders over, frowning. ‘I hope you’re finally getting to grips with the technology, Mrs Bigley.’

‘Yes, I am. Thanks.’

I turn round to meet the extravagant eyebrow wiggling of Simon, the chef, who’s standing there patiently in his chef’s whites, waiting for Dom to depart and me to present the order.

Simon says, as Dom retreats, ‘Why does he keep calling you Mrs B instead of Sue?’

‘I don’t know, but it does make me feel positively ancient.’

‘And you don’t have to come into the kitchen, you know. You just relay the order to the KMS – kitchen management system – and I pick it up from there.’

‘Um, yes, I’ll do that next time.’ All these abbreviations make me flustered, too. Life seems to be whizzing by me on all fronts. I feel as if I’ll wake up one day and be the only one not jet-packing to work.