You can’t choose your family – or your dining companions!

Having recently returned from an absolutely wonderful cruise on Splendour of the Seas, it has certainly re-confirmed all the reasons I love this type of holiday – amazing destinations, fantastic food, superb service & best of all meeting new people.

We were on a table for 10, although 2 of our dining companions decided that the 2nd sitting was just too late for them & moved to the 6pm sitting after the first night (was it something we said)??? The other couple were too tired to join us on the 1st night.

So on the 2nd night there was my sister & I, Mel & Andy, Martha & her mum, Nancy plus the couple that had been absent the night before. The rest of us had all bonded pretty well on the first night. It’s always a little bit like Russian roulette as to what kind of people you get put together to dine with & we thought we’d struck pretty lucky. And then…….

along came……let’s call him ‘Grim’.

That nightmare person you are stuck with on your table for the rest of your cruise!

On first impressions he was polite & that’s pretty much where the niceties finish, although his wife  seemed very nice when she could get a word in edge-ways. Within  5 minutes we knew that he had cruised over 30 times & was a Diamond member of the Royal Caribbean loyalty club (this was repeated several times each night just to make sure we didn’t forget)!We also knew that he was impatient, demanding & downright rude to the waiting staff.

We had one nights reprieve when they dined in the Windjammer restaurant, but other than that we had to witness the staff being regularly berated, the restaurant manager being called over several times for no good reason & generally lots of cringe-worthy moments. Grim’s wife had to leave the table on 2 occasions as she was so upset & embarrassed about his his appalling antics.

All credit to the staff , John & Rafael, they dealt with him with professionalism, politeness & despite being spoken to in a patronising & aggressive manner, tried to meet his every need. We made sure that both the manager & staff knew exactly what we thought of ‘Grim’ & how professionally the waiting staff had dealt with him. The rest of us had lots of laughs at Grim’s expense with extremely childish (but very funny) code words & hand signals throughout our meals.

If we hadn’t have been blessed with the other 4 fantastic dining companions & truly wonderful waiting staff, we definitely would have asked to be moved.

It didn’t ruin our experience, in fact in some ways it added some entertainment value, but it did cause some uncomfortable moments for all of us.

It begs the question, however, why somebody who seemed to do nothing but moan about almost all aspects of this cruise & many others that he had been on should continue to put himself through these ‘traumatic’ experiences over & over again?

Have you ever had a nightmare dining companion? Have you avoided going to dinner because of them? I’d love to know. Comment below.