Only one person got up

Six friends at a seafood place on the corniche in Muscat, and the food is forty minutes late.

One of them has been narrating the delay since minute ten. The service is slow. The place has gone downhill. Nothing in this city is ever on time. Every remark is true and none of them helps. The table already knows the food is late. Hearing it again only makes the wait feel longer.

Another friend stands, finds the waiter, and asks what has happened. The grill had a problem and the fish was started again. She asks whether the bread and salads could come out first, and whether two of the grilled dishes could be swapped for something quicker. The waiter looks relieved to be asked something he can answer.

Both of them were complaining, in a sense. Only one of them was whining.

A complaint, done properly, is generous. It names what went wrong to someone able to change it, and it usually costs the person making it a little nerve. It can even draw people together: a table that rescued a bad evening tends to remember it fondly. A good complaint is the explanation that comes just before doing something differently.

Whining is the other thing. It is commentary on a problem everyone can already see, offered to people who cannot fix it, with nothing attached. It tires the people who have to listen, and it moves nothing.

The bread arrives. The table eats. The fish follows.

Everyone at that table could see the food was late. Only one person got up.