It's the arse-end of Friday afternoon and it's been a trying week. A new system has been deployed at work, and never before have I seen such a supremely bad effort. I've decided that in most situations, the powers-that-be are fuzzy muppets. I need to become a process efficiency expert and sack half of the world. Swoosh-Swish-Hack-Schlop - heads roll, and it's for the best.

I had yet another spat with Carluccio's this afternoon, and it's my fault for going back and giving them my money expecting a fair return, like a decent fucking meal. They are on the verge of receiving a letter from me, and I might just do that for the fun of it, just to see what Fuzzy Muppet has to say. I know I keep yammering on about the failures of the service industry, I know they can't help it, which is why they are there in the first place, the service industry is where talent goes to die, where gormless half-life's make there beds, roam faceless, pallid, anemic and without any sense of awarewness through rows of people wanting what they are there to deliver. They don't get it, they just want the paultry sums of shrapnel from my pocket, my loose change, which, if they are not careful, I might actually stop throwing in the bin and start putting it on their little silver begging bowls.

I had a pasta there yesterday, which to their credit was tasty, and a perfectly measured portion. I don't like too much and I don't like to little. Today, because of the fatigue incurred over the week, I decided not to put any effort into my food plan, and I went back to Carluccio's. So unwilling was I to put any effort into my choices or thought, I ordered the same thing.

It came, quickly too, but so quickly because only half of it was there. I decided not to say anything, being the spineless squid that I can sometimes be, and thought I'd eat it anyway, full of resent and brimming with ever increasing anger, towards myself for eating it and towards the chef for plating it, and towards the plate-carrying camel who brought it to me. It was an embarassingly small portion, my seething anger didn't last very long on account of the pasta not being enough to last more than a few minutes. It was tasty though, whatever morsel was there on the plate. Once it was finished the waiter came along to remove the plate. I took the opportunity to tell him that we should all be shot, me, the chef and him. I asked him to convey the message to the chef, in my words, and to tell the chef that he should think what his Mamma would say if she saw a sad and pitiful plate of pasta. I'm sure Mamma would do nothing short of cut his balls off. Was there something she did wrong in bringing him up? Was he not Italian enough?

On second thought, that might be the probem, maybe he wasn't Italian, maybe he was from the Russian Steppes and used to surviving on a diet of Yoghurt and rat salad, scraps of breadcrumbs for croutons. When I left I had a brief conversation with another waiter as I couldn't wait for the one who served me to collect his begging bowl. The one who looked like a resurrected roadkill Koyote from a c-grade Zombie movie.

My hand twitches as Zombie Koyote encroaches, lumping along, leaving a trail of rancid waiter juice on the floor, green and slimy, his face peeling and grey, the dark rings under his late-night-working-coke-sniffing eyes make him look more like a Raccoon, the Russian Roadkill Raccoon. My hand twitches and in the split second I see Russian Roadkill Raccoon look longingly at my neck, he wants to suck the life and intelligence out of me, before I know it, he's splattered against the walls of Carluccios, ripped to shreds by the hail of bullets released by the trigger when I squeezed it.

I snap out of it, waiter boy, who was actually Tweededum from my last adventures in restuarant wonderland is talking to me. He's telling me that he's been released from coffee duty and has been set loose, like a stray dog on the floor, to serve people, to advise them on what's good to eat. He's thinking that he's been promoted from coffee boy to bus boy, but I know that he's been suspended from coffee making duty because the coffee machine had a higher intelligence quotient. He's complaining about his hamstring because now he has to walk the floor, he's telling me with his droopy eyes and sagging lips, his face like a lump of lard with palsy, that he's going to develop a good ass. I turn around, hold my face and rub my brow, there's a couple of kids sitting at a table, banging their knives and forks together, over, and over, and over, over, and over and over again. Their mother doesn't register, I lean in, really, I lean, raise my finger to my lips and tell them to be quiet, they stop and then look at me, with 4 year old 'fuck you' eyes and do it all over again, only this time at 3 times the speed. I admire the little bastards because they know, they know and sense that my present state of mind is on edge and that any attempt to stop them will be totally ineffectual.

I turn back to Tweedledum and tell him that the chef is taking the piss and that there'll be no tip. Chef fucked you OK. Now go and tell him. He tells me to express my discontent to the manager, I turn and see who he's gesturing to, it's the crocodile, still basking in the mellow glow of her own stupidity. I decide to walk, to get out of there as soon as I can.

The rest of the afternoon in the office was soothed by the nutty French lady, Hermine walking about with a bowl of lavender oil in water, waving it like the wee Catholic altar boys do their incense. Revitalising the workers, the busy little workers.

It does make me laugh really.