How to Behave in Cafés

If you, as it seems is the case with many members of the general public, enjoy the recreational baiting of those poor souls compelled to work in the service industry, here are a few tips for achieving maximum effect:

  • Place your order fifteen minutes before closing time. The more items you can get the staff to use that they already tidied/washed up, the better. Bonus points for insisting on eating your food there.
  • Take ten thousand paper napkins. Make all of them ever so slightly dirty.
  • Walk past the café and leave your rubbish on the tables.
  • Sit down at one of the tables to eat/drink something you bought elsewhere. Leave the rubbish behind when you have finished.
  • Address the staff in Norwegian or German. They are bound to understand, you're in Iceland after all.
  • Ask about the ingredients and price of every single thing on the menu. After much consideration, either buy the soup of the day or change your mind and leave. Bonus points for doing this while a long queue forms behind you.
  • Use plastic cutlery and put your hummus in the little plastic pots, even though you are eating there. Fuck the environment.
  • Come in, pour yourself a full glass of water, take two sips and then leave.
  • Demand your money back because you do not like your cake/meal, even though you have eaten two thirds of it just to make sure.
  • Allow your child to scatter cheerios all over the table and surrounding floor. Make no attempt to clean up after him. That's their job.
  • Interrogate the staff on the possible presence of flour in your food, even though you are not gluten intolerant and have no special dietary requirements at all. Flour is poison and if you eat it you will die.
  • Ask what the soup of the day is. When told, grimace and say "ugh!" Walk out in disgust.
  • Watch as your friend orders something which has to be heated up in the oven or requires preparation. Wait until the member of staff has tidied up after this, then order the same.
  • Wait until you see the member of staff start putting your food on a plate / in a bowl before you mention that you wanted to take away. 
  • Ask whether the food is nice.
  • Ask whether there is meat in the meat soup.
  • Ask whether you can have a half portion of everything on the menu.
  • Ask whether you can pay in Norwegian krone.
  • When the time comes to pay, make sure you are on the phone.

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