A World Gone Mad

By Andrew Bomm
Last weekend I had the pleasure of a weekend away in the fair city of Melbourne, a city I love. I was joined by great friends who had made the effort to come from all parts of the country, in large part to indulge me in one of my rare forays into reliving the youthful experience of seeing live music, going to the footy, consuming ale and not dealing with tantrums or changing nappies. In a word, freedom. In more than one word, some fun times enjoyed within the boundaries imposed by married life with kids and a professional career on the other side of Sunday.
 
To cut a long story short, after a solid evening on Friday we found ourselves in the public bar area of the Union Club Hotel in Fitzroy at around two in the afternoon on Saturday. For a country boy used to a few old blokes in front of the TAB on a Saturday afternoon in the pub, the Union struck me as vibrant, young, engaging and pretty well chockers. The crowd may have been a little too pretentious for the venue, but it was in an unthreatening Melbourne hipster kind of way, so nobody gave a bugger. None of our fellow patrons was going to look down at us for our dated boot cut jeans. That sort of behaviour is for Sydney. It was exactly what we were after.   
 
We found a table, ordered a few beers, some late lunch, and for a couple of hours talked the sort of utter drivel that passes for entertaining conversation among long held friends. The music was spot on and the beer flowed. A heady mix of Dylan, Beatles, B52’s, Icehouse and Coopers Pale Ale. All at an appropriately mellow volume except the beer. Good times. No, great times. Even a chance encounter with the least funny comedian in the world, a Canberra sucubus we all spent years avoiding during university, could not spoil the ambience.
 
Then, at around four o’clock, as we were starting to settle in for a lively session, something completely unexpected and utterly disturbing happened. A waitress approached the table with a piece of paper and some sticky tape. She attached it to the table. It said, “Muir 5pm”. She said, “This table’s been booked, you’ll need to move at five”. She flounced away. We, the current inhabitants of this simple pub table with Comfortable Chairs, looked at each other in dazzled confusion. I beg your pardon? What is happening? We are comfortable here! Is this not a humble pub in which I sit?
 
The disbelief manifested itself as a secondary volley of questions, expressed at a volume to be deliberately audible to the hipster clientele around; the ultimate culprits for this travesty by so clearly acquiescing to ridiculous interference in their personal freedoms in the way hipsters love to do. And yes, I’m talking about plastic shopping bags to you with the six figure income and the faux op shop wardrobe. When did it become reasonable for someone to appropriate my well-earned seat in a crowded pub, simply by making a phone call from their home prior to arrival? Did I miss the memo that said “Your drinking place is more assured by engaging in remote communication with the bar staff than actually being physically present at the pub”? Has my residence in country New South Wales left me out of touch with mainstream societal behavior? Is this the Melbourne version of the schmiddy? 
 
Can I impose the same treatment on someone else in the pub by calling the bar from two metres away and booking a table?
 
It is not as though we were all nursing a warm lemonade, either. Beer was flowing, and it was disappearing into bar takings at a fair clip. I would estimate that our modest group of five were comfortably sending $100 an hour over the bar via $20 jugs of Coopers. But apparently, at the Union Club Hotel in Fitzroy, you can waltz in to a crowded pub and order lucrative patrons from hitherto seated comfort simply by having made a cursory phone call prior to arrival. This is obviously breathtaking rudeness on the part of both client and proprietor. But more importantly, it is too easy. The precedent that this possibility sets must be contemplated.
 
Just consider the chaos in popular pubs around Australia if this were to become universally acceptable behavior. There would be empty seats in pubs everywhere as groups of friends locked in tables at every conceivable venue they might want to go that evening. More relevant, though, is the effect on the responsibilities of bar staff. Note to pubs: your bar staff will turn into receptionists from everyone forced into the game of phone-around musical chairs. Can you imagine the absurdity of it, people punted off their table ringing the staff of the bar they are already in to punt another patron off another table secured in the traditional way? That is, being there. There would be bits of paper and sticky tape flying around the place like confetti as confusion and conflict reigned supreme. Kafka eat your heart out.
 
I conclude by making a simple request to publicans either indulging this nonsense or contemplating it: end the madness. Stop the boats. If you want to have table bookings in your pub have a designated dining room and treat it like one. No table bookings in the public bar. Ever.