A Catering Experience

Some of you may know that we are members of a Bridge Club in our local town.  Once a year there is a tournament followed by aperos and food and in previous years the food has been dire.  So much so that last year Sue could stand it no more.  And hence this weekend, we were the caterers.

Sue had devised a menu which was accepted by the committee and so we were quite happy to proceed.  However, the first difficulty was to fix the numbers we had to cater for; very difficult as players could register as late as the morning of the tournament!  It was generally agreed that there wouldn't be more than 80 and we organised accordingly.
The tournament was to end about 6 o'clock  and everything was ready to go in the kitchen adjacent to the hall.  Once speeches started, with results to be announced and prizes given out, we began to put the food out.
What we hadn't realised was that the appearance of the food would signal a rush for plates for the food.  We had budgeted for a small piece of salmon and a chicken thigh per person and so we were anxious to serve that before the 'customers' helped themselves to salads. But we found ourselves trying to hold the hordes back and avoid a free for all.  We managed to negotiate the main course, fending off requests for more chicken, is there any sauce, is there mayonnaise, etc.
But this was repeated once the puddings started to appear; a rush to form a queue, can I have a piece of everything, I can't join the queue as I've got to go!!!!
Then, to crown it all, one lady tipped all of our spare cutlery out into a box so she could use the carrier-bag and proceeded to collect up all of the chicken bones from people's plates ... as well as trying to fill it up with chicken and salmon which remained on the serving platters.  I think she knew that I was not best pleased ... and then we took it away back into the kitchen.
We had thought that a crowd of mature people would act sensibly but ... c'est la vie say the old folks ...