The hardest word to say...

I've been vexed this week. Let me know if I'm over-reacting. I'm afraid it's a long one.

On Sunday, I went to the local with my girlfriend for a quick drink before we headed to the local am dram awards ceremony (Someone Who'll Watch Over Me netted a special award for our director, Keith Perry. Validation!). I ordered two glasses of prosecco and paid by debit card.

By pure chance, I happened to look at my receipt, to see a tip that I very definitely didn't authorise. I asked the barmaid what was going on and she half-smiled and told me that I must have entered it myself on the chip and PIN machine. Bit of a basic error to lie right to someone's face about something that happened less than two minutes ago.

The duty manager was lurking, and they refunded my original payment in full, and then made me enter my PIN again to pay for the drinks, sans tip. I was handed back a bundle of receipts and my card and I must have paused a bit, taken aback at the complete lack of reaction, because the manager looked at me and said: "All right?"

Well, no, I wasn't all right, really. That was sort of fraud, I think. And I said, fairly quietly and without swearing for once, that I really wasn't happy that this had happened, observed that I came into the pub a lot, with a lot of friends, bought a lot of beers, almost always paid by card, almost never checked my receipt and how was I now to know that this wasn't a regular thing?

He gave me quite a long rambling lecture about how the chip and PIN machines are set up, and I eventually cut him off with a 'whatever, I'm going to have my drink', or words to that effect. I think this might have been the very first point at which the word 'sorry' or anything like it was used. Maybe.

"Is it just me?" I said as I sat down with my girlfriend and one other friend, "Or should his reaction have been a bit more 'Oh goodness me, I'm so sorry, how could that ever have happened, let me correct that at once, my apologies?' with possibly an offer of a free beer?"

It was felt I'd have been pushing my luck for the free beer, but that the first bit was pretty much on the nose. It was also felt, however, that after I'd left so visibly unhappy, the free drink (or, you know, something) might have been in order.

We'd nearly finished our drinks, and it was almost time to meet our friend who was driving us to the venue. Duty manager looms at my elbow wanting a word. To 'sort things out'. Typical, I thought, cast iron certainty of a free beer and I won't have time to drink it.

But no. His idea of sorting out the fact that I was now a very angry regular customer was to stand over me and tell me about how much he trusted all his staff and how I could request itemised receipts if I was ever worried in future and how he knew I came in there a lot and he wanted to be sure it was sorted out.

To be fair, I think it was genuinely his idea of an apology, but delivered with him standing over me in a fairly intimidating fashion and, you know, not actually containing an apology, it lacked a certain something.

So, off we toddled to celebrate Richmond borough's thriving am dram scene. And when I got home, a bit buzzed but mostly sober, I tweeted on the subject. As one does in this day and age.

The landlord tweeted back. "I think you'll find it was all done in error, my asst. manager has told me all about it. Please feel free to pop in & we'll talk"

Note the continuing absence of the s-word.

By this point, the original £1.10 or something that I was overcharged had become completely irrelevant. I slept on it (ie sobered up) before replying that I was more annoyed with the offensive way it had been handled.

"Apologies for any unintended offence caused, please pop in for a chat so we can resolve everything."

Which at first I thought was OK. Finally some actual apologetic words. But... do I want to pop in for a chat to resolve everything? Not really, to be honest. I tried for two apologies from the duty manager and instead got a series of insights into their payments technology. And even assuming the landlord's going to be a bit less of a pillock (which I frankly doubt from his first tweet on the subject: "I think you'll find" indeed! How patronising is that?), do I want to continue going to a pub where I know I'll now have a reputation for being 'difficult'? It's instantly become a less than relaxing prospect for an evening's drinking, just because I complained about being ripped off.

So, what I'm thinking now, is STUFF. YOU. You had your chance to resolve everything on the spot, and you blew it. You don't get to take time out of my schedule so you can go through the motions of appeasing me so that I'll stop being snippy about you on Twitter. You don't get to choose how I react to your shoddy service, I do, and I choose... indifference. We're done.

So this is what's happened. After Tuesday's panto rehearsal, one friend and I decided to go for a drink, and I tested the water and asked if we could go to the pub at the other end of the road, because I'd had 'a bit of nonsense at the usual place'. We were joined by my brother, sister-in-law, and a few actors, and we had such a good time that we went straight back the next evening for the pub quiz (we failed the quiz miserably, but I won a bottle of wine in a bonus round!). And one of our friends works behind the bar so we're definitely going back after Friday's rehearsal...

See where this is going? I wasn't kidding or blustering when I did the whole "I come in here all the time and buy a lot of drinks" thing. It was our regular post-rehearsal venue and my closest friends and I have easily spent a non-trivial four figure sum in that pub in the last year alone (if that figure seems shocking, consider that my favourite beer there is £4.80 a pint and that I really do write all my first drafts in pubs. It adds up quickly.).

Now, I'm not stupid enough or arrogant enough to think that my very vague boycott is going to have much impact on anyone's bottom line. We're talking about a celeb-frequented boozer next to a major London tourist attraction and a rugby club. With a beer garden. And we might have drunk a lot, but we hardly ever ate there, which is where they probably make most of their money. But word is spreading about this incident, even before I thought to write a rambling blog post on the subject.

TL;DR: You can get further with a kind word and a free bag of crisps than you can with just a kind word. But without either, you're kind of screwed.