Comment: Service with a smile?

A visit to my mum's local never used to be an appealing prospect. It was the kind of place you nipped in for a pint after church on Christmas Day and refused to set foot in for the next 364 days.

Then five years ago a new tenant came in and it soon became the kind of pub I was happy to go on my birthday, or to take a new girlfriend. And the food was spectacular.

So imagine my shock last weekend when my family and I went down for dinner, only to have one of the worst experiences I've ever had in a pub.And do you know what the real problem was? It wasn't the overcooked tuna steak; it wasn't the lack of parent company Shepherd Neame's flagship ale on the bar; it wasn't receiving the wrong beer order and it wasn't the ridiculous house music playing all the way through dinner. It was the staff, who made the visit a very awkward experience.

These aren't my words but those of my family. And that's the problem. Being in this job you get hyper-sensitive to such things and probably don't react like the average punter when things go wrong. So if it was just me complaining, it might have been OK to take it with a pinch of salt.

But my family are regular customers. And they were ignored throughout our meal and, worse, completely blanked as we made our way out. Their reaction to this? "Well, we're never going in there again".

I was quite surprised by the ferocity of their response. But one very careless evening's service has lost that pub regulars. As we walked home I thought about how it's the little things that will make all the difference in the world to a pub's business over the next very testing year.