Tomorrow is Babcia's 80th birthday party, which means that this morning we went to Orawski Dwór, where we'll have the party, in order to finalize the details for tomorrow. In a similar situation in the States, the conversation would have gone something like this:

"We would like to do X."

"That's no problem. I thought we were going to do Y, but we'll adapt. Doing X will be no problem."

Or it might sound like this:

"One of our guests would need Y when they arrive," where Y is some service that restaurants don't usually provide.

"We don't currently have the facilities to do Y, to be honest, but we'll figure something out for them."

What wouldn't happen is a light, polite, passive-aggressive questioning of the client's plans. What wouldn't happen is a polite, passive-aggressive questioning of the client's knowledge of the invited guests and the likelihood of disaster if the client doesn't do X, Y, and Z as the manager suggests.

"That was a weird conversation," was E's summary of the two-hour (two-hour) experience.

The whole thing reminded me of my shopping experiences in the nineties when sales reps' response to customers' arrival was simple, direct, and undeniably impolite: "Słucham." Literally, "I'm listening."