Charlie Meatball

ATTN: waitstaff at restaurants and hotel staff

RE: Your request for comments

I’ve received about fifty comment cards from hotels and restaurants now, so I have to assume that you, the good people of the Indian service industry, or at least your managers, want my opinion on how my experience of your service has been.  I’m guessing that I’ve gotten this many requests for my feedback entirely due to the fact that I’m a foreigner, but I’m beginning to suspect that this has as much to do with you thinking I’ll give you better marks than Indians will as it does with you wanting to market to foreigners.  Regardless, you asked and now I’m going to actually tell you what I think.

First off, you know all those comment cards I filled out?  Full of lies.  Why would I give you honest feedback when you were about 3 feet away, looking over my shoulder, reading my answer as I wrote it, and making nervous faces?  Worse, some of you actually told me which boxes to check or what to write and got agitated when it looked like I might fill something else out.  I was once even asked to change my answer.  Look people, I really don’t care enough about your particular restaurant enough to deal with that.  I’ll just tell you what you want to hear and tell my friends not to go there if the service was pushy and the food was crap.

Second, we Westerners (and actually all of the East Asians I’ve talked to as well) have this thing about not liking to have people - even ones trying to be helpful - constantly underfoot so that we have to negotiate with you in order to do simple stuff.  That means we want service when we ask for it, being available if we need something, and otherwise staying the hell away.  A couple of examples of this come to mind.  First off, I am perfectly capable of carrying things, opening doors, and picking stuff up for myself.  It’s nice for the occasional door to be opened for me, but when I tell you I’ve got it please back off.  Most importantly, if I have the bag in my hand and I say not to take it, do not attempt to take it from me.  At that point, I’m doing everything in my power not to get really angry and perhaps physically assertive.  Sure, people who aren’t 1.82 meters tall, 90 kilos, and a bit of a hothead are probably not going to physically do anything, but they’re probably even more pissed off than I am and more than a bit frightened.  No grabbing!

Also, when you treat us like we can’t do anything for ourselves, it’s bad enough, but you often compound this by actually getting in our way as we’re trying to do stuff.  I’ve had items that I needed to hold, plates and saucers at buffet tables, picked up and brought one foot closer to me as I attempted to reach for them.  So now, instead of reaching two and a half feet for the thing on the table, I have to stop, wait for you to move it, then reach a foot and a half (to the new place you’re holding it) for something that you just put your hands all over.  That saves me zero effort and is one more set of hands on something that will touch my food.

Worse is when you don’t even seem to be attempting to anticipate my needs and yet still doing things to me or my stuff.  OK, I can accept that your idea of service means I don’t actually get to control my portion sizes and instead you will dish out food to me when you want to.  I can even deal with feeling like you’re my Jewish mom (hi mom!) pushing food on me (and I can push back when required).  But why, as a part of that, do you sometimes just re-arrange the stuff on my table?  When I put my glass or plate or fork down in one spot on the table, you came by and moved it somewhere else.  Why?  What are you thinking?  Is it an attempt to improve the feng shui?  You put your hands where I’m going to be eating for no good reason I could see except that you expect me to have a certain arrangement of plate, fork, and glass.  Sometimes we’ve even gone back and forth a couple times.  I put it one place, you move it to another, I put it back, you move it again.  I’ve re-arranged things to suit my liking - not much mind you, not to crazy weird locations like putting my plate on someone else’s chair or anything - and yet you see the need to “correct” them.  Seriously, cut it out.

OK, I have more to tell you about, but I gotta go to work, so I’ll have to write more later.  Until then, quit hanging about only yards away from my table while refusing to meet my eye contact and dressing down the waiters below you.  I love your food, and I know you’re trying so hard to please me.  I honestly think that if I just clear a few things up, we can both enjoy my meals out a lot more.

Sincerely,

Charlie

P.S. Next time I’ll likely want to talk about retail salespeople.

P.P.S. Sarah, Sharon, Tom, Dev, or anyone else who’s traveled in India, send comments for things I’ve missed.

Tags: culture, food, India

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 16th, 2008 at 10:11 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.