After dinner

To dinner one night last week in my favourite restaurant in the lovely city of Stuttgart. It’s a stylish place; the food’s good (and diet-friendly); the beer’s cold; the waitresses…

Oh my. The waitresses. Three of them, clad head-to-toe in black. All petite, pretty, dark hair tied back. I could have watched them working for hours. Indeed, since the book I’d taken to read was dreadful, I *did* watch them work for hours, and very pleasantly distracting it was too.

I felt sorry for them, too. For the chef/proprietor would make them stay behind after the last customers and the other staff had left, and ask them for their views as to how the evening had gone. “Pretty well, I think,” one would reply, until his raised eyebrows caused them to reflect more critically. The glass dropped; the wine spilled; the incorrect order; the portion of food left to go cold before it was served; the plates uncleared; the slight squabble behind the closed kitchen door.

They’d been given a warning the previous week; they’d each been punished individually, in private, before. This time, they’d learn their lesson together, more publicly.

He’d make them strip – despite their protestations that the floor-to-ceiling windows would allow passers-by a clear view. They’d be made to kneel naked next to one another on the long oak table that runs the length of the restaurant – and he’d strap them until each was in tears.

Two of them would then be allowed to dress and leave. The third – the senior one, the one to whom he was particularly close – would be made to stay behind. She’d learn an even tougher lesson about disappointing him – a further thrashing, and then other means of teaching her discipline and obedience that would make her blush deeply and avoid eye contact with him every time she walked through the restaurant doors in the days to come…