Adam's Breed

It was a very good thing that Gian-Luca's under-waiters were a well-trained lot of young men, that indeed he had trained most of them himself to the standard required by the Doric. For the eyes of a headwaiter must only be all-seeing in purely material matters, and once they begin to see beneath the surface their owner is no longer really proficient, and this was what had happened to Gian-Luca. Gian-Luca the implacable, the perfect machine, with those long years of training behind him, was gradually becoming a mere obstruction. His voice would sound vague when he gave his orders, and the orders themselves would be uncertain, so that Daniele must ask him to repeat them, while Roberto the watchful would whisper to Giovanni:

"He is stranger than ever today, amico; we had better look out for trouble."