Playing well

What we want the evening to look like

An evening and then bed is a better night here than a guest who was still sitting when the door shut. That is not a slogan. It is why the room is set up the way it is. Three tables, not six. Closing at one, not at four. No credit. Nothing anywhere on this land gives out cash. The counter stops serving at eleven, two hours before the tables, and guests notice that fast.

Age, every visit

Eighteen in Colombia, photo ID every time, including for the guest who ate beside the pool an hour before. A phone with a photo of a cédula on it is not a cédula.

What the staff do on the spot

• Hold a limit you set. Say the number before you sit and it is written down.
• Answer the question what time is it, immediately. The clock is on the end wall.
• Hold the place for twenty minutes while you eat, swim or sleep on it.
• Keep you out for a few days on request, written where the next shift will see it.
• Take a self-exclusion at reception, in person, effective that evening.

None of that is on this website and that is deliberate. Each one is said to somebody standing in front of you, thirty paces away. A web form would save us that conversation, which is exactly what is wrong with it.

Five signs that are worth admitting to

• You are thinking about the tables while standing at the river mouth at six in the morning, which is the reason people come to this coast.
• You went back along the corridor after saying out loud that you had finished.
• You know which machine in the village has money and which does not, and you learned it this week.
• You are playing at a number you would not repeat to whoever you came with.
• You would rather nobody here used your name. They do, because nine people look after twelve rooms.

Training

The two who work the door and the counter are briefed before their first shift and once a year after that: the law, how to read an ID, how to refuse somebody without a scene, and the guest whose drinking has overtaken the play. The manager on duty passes through twice in an evening. Both of them have closed a table early and neither was asked to explain it afterwards.

How to ask

Mention it at the door, or at reception. Whatever words turn up will do. Nobody will make it awkward and nobody will tell anybody who does not need to know.