Experience In Chez Jacques

[ginabab]

We had an ornate guest -decorated table next to ours one night in a specialty restaurant

Now sure I like this option It was distracting

[bitob]

We had an ornate guest -decorated table next to ours one night in a specialty restaurant

Now sure I like this option It was distracting

 

 

I wonder if these are cruisers who come from mass market lines - the same people who decorate their cabin doors and have cabin crawls and grab bags. I'd hate for this type of behavior to ruin the ambiance on Oceania

[JPR]

Amen.

[shedridt]

I am bewildered over all of this, as surely it was the obligation of the maitre'd in Jacques to ensure that this fine restaurant was not 'self-decorated' by a bunch of people who wanted to set up a private party that seems to have been kid-centric.

 

Had I been in the dining room & positioned next to this sort of thing I'd have kicked up a fuss with the maitre'd right then & there --- & if he didn't work things out to the satisfaction of adults who expected a certain standard (that did NOT include balloons & loud entertainment!) I'd have raised the issue next day with HIS supervisor. This is just not on....

 

The notion of having 'good manners' has almost become an out of date nicety & that is too bad. At some level, civility has to be enforced (listen to THAT...in the current political climate!)....but if civility isn't insisted upon at some level, it will exist nowhere. We are plummeting toward that end.....

[shedridt]

I'm a museum guide with an almost unique focus - I guide both inside this world class museum of American decorative arts AND outside in its gardens. So far, it's the gardens where we find the Philistines at the gate but it's all of a piece with what you're describing here.

 

Last week I began my narrated tour of the garden on a tram by asking everyone to turn off their cell phones (finger to lips, in the hope [VAIN!] that visitors will extrapolate from silent cell phones to silence in the midst of narration...) & sure enough 10 minutes into the narration a cell phone went off. I stopped driving, & asked the visitor to please turn off their phone. The POISONOUS looks throughout the rest of the tour were as nothing in comparison to the five minutes of diatribe I received at the end of the tour. I ended by repeating - over & defeated over again like a robot! - "I am sorry if you felt inconvenienced..." & by the end of it my head was almost on the steering wheel. If I'd looked at that stupid woman I'd have been rude & that wasn't an option.

 

WHAT are we to do in this environment, in which people seem to believe that because they've paid ($5000 for a cruise, $22 for a museum pass), they can do whatever they wish? That their wishes might not work within the framework of a group seems not to occur to them.

 

The problem is that THIS cruise line & MY museum have decided that they need to do anything - ANYTHING! - to attract customers/visitors.

 

It seems to me that it is the obligation of Oceania - AND my museum! - to not allow this sort of acting out. Until the rules are made plain & are ENFORCED, the rest of us will suffer at their awful hands.