Published in The Hindu Open Page
The
customer can just fret and stew
Who
exactly is king in this context?
May 28, 2017 12:05 am | Updated 12:10 am IST
There seems to be a
conspiracy to make the customer sweat and stew a bit. Maybe it increases an
establishment’s snob value. Here is a partial list of customer woes.
Your day might begin at 6 a.m., but in many
cities in India the shops open leisurely at noon. Even so, you, the customer,
cannot barge into the shop on the dot of 12. The shop owner, just arrived, and
sour about your witnessing his rolling up the shop-shutter himself, sets about
elaborately praying to the row of framed pictures of deities. This normally
takes about 10 minutes but will go up to 20 if you dare show signs of
impatience. He’s making you stew.
The office receptionist has her signature
move. As you arrive she grabs the phone, looks at you, and smiles. You are
glad. But her smile is for the person at the other end of the phone. She
practises looking through you. While you are wondering if you should smile
back, she ends her conversation and seamlessly shifts to tapping keys on her
computer, still holding that half-smile, not meant for you. It’s in memory of
that phone conversation she has just finished. The only way to get things
moving is to ring her up from your mobile. Tell her, ‘Hi, I’m standing two feet
in front of you trying to get your attention.’
The roadside vendors are never alone. Some
jobless sidekick, with all the time in the world, is present by his side,
exchanging wisdom. You go there but have to wait out their conversation for
minutes before the vendor turns to you. He is perhaps showing you he too has a
robust social life.
You take your vehicle for repair. The
mechanic appears perplexed and remains frozen in the interior gloom of his
shop, jerking his head at you interrogatively, as though he is not only dumb
but also afraid to come out. Irritated, you reply in exaggerated sign language
indicating the trouble. After minutes of mime, he reluctantly comes out to
inspect your vehicle, having established the protocol of making you sweat.
Your door-bell rings. It’s the gas-cylinder
guy. His head is bent as if he’s just been hanged; his mobile phone is wedged
under his chin, and he is talking non-stop into it. You open the door and wait
to have a word with him, but he is looking at you and talking to someone else,
and hands you the voucher wordlessly. You pay and he turns about and leaves,
bent-necked, and still talking over the receding echo of the rolling cylinder
in the corridor.
You get into the bus. The conductor murmurs
something and it is inaudible because the acoustic shock of the in-house music
is rattling your specs and the water bottle in your hand. You have to shout out
your destination, and the fare he mentions is still not clear, and you shell
out the approximate amount and don’t really expect to get back change. So be
it. The high decibel is sacred. You, the customer, come next.
It’s a shop, and the boss is not around. You
can hear the tinny squeak of the shop-assistant’s earphones as he stands behind
the counter. You can imagine what they are doing to his ear-drums. He can’t
hear you, and doesn’t seem to know why. It doesn’t occur to him to switch off
the music. If you ask him in sign-language to remove the darned earphones, he looks
shocked, as if you had asked him to pull the plug on his own life-support
system.
And, so on. It’s time customers turned the
tables. We should step into shops and just stare at the staff, or deliberately
talk inaudibly, then exit. Or start a long conversation on our mobiles, while
smiling and looking through the shop-assistant, mystifying the fellow with some
sign-language, and then leave all the same. Let them stew, too, for a change.
https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/the-customer-can-just-fret-and-stew/article18591127.ece
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