An Efficient Meal or Mein Fräulein mit den Großen Füßen

Last night I had dinner in a restaurant off Leicester Square. I was served by a German waitress of Amazonian stature. She clomped over to the table to take my order and passed me the menu. Then she stood at the table while I perused it. After several minutes of standing to attention beside me she took the menu out of my hand and said, "You heff decided now please?" I made my order and she said, "Off korss!", and clomped off.

I then had time to survey the other clientele, who tonight mainly comprised Eastern Euros and Middle Eastern families. I was also seated at the top of a steep flight of stairs that led down to the Ladies and Gents toilets below, the two doors of which, I noticed, the proprietor had posted with no other signage except, respectively, a large 1930s photograph of a moustachioed Italian count and a buxom Italian contessa. It was astounding to watch the consternation that attended each customer's arrival at the doors, and how long it took them to work out this mystifying puzzle. It was as if they had been asked to decipher the Rosetta Stone. Without exception they would each reach the bottom of the stairs, look at one door, then the other, then the first again, then they would shake their head and drop their arms to their sides in defeat before taking pot luck and entering a door at random. This produced a roughly 50/50 success rate, most of which occurred purely by chance.

The German Amazon clomped back. She smashed my plate of food down on the table and barked, "You vill enchoy!" I thought I had better obey orders and so I started to tuck in. The food was actually very good so I didn't have to fear any Rheine-Wrath.

Halfway through the meal Brunhilde stomped over again and tried to remove my wine glass which was far from empty. I raised my hand in protest and she said, 
"Oh, you heff not hed yet enoff?" I nodded sheepishly and she thumped the glass back down on the table and clomped away again. Five minutes later and she was back, She barked, 
"Iss your meal setissfektory?"
"Yes", I blurted, through the mouthful of food she had just witnessed me shoveling in. She replied, "Off korss!", and stomped away to terrify a Polish family that had just sat down.

My meal finished, I caught my Rheinemaiden's eye and made the universal sign language of requesting the bill: a make-believe pen in my raised right hand making a make-believe scrawl on a make-believe docket. She nodded curtly from across the room and went off to prepare it. Then she thudded across the restaurant with the bill on a little silver plate which she smashed down efficiently onto the table with a barked, "Zenk you, Sir!" I put the required amount on the dish, and a generous tip in payment for the great entertainment.

As I stood up to leave I was just in time to see a burly young Russian truck-driver wander downstairs and timorously enter the Ladies.

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