A Customer Speaks

There are people who still live on Gandhian principles. Like the Mavawallah(khoaawallah) on MC Jawle road at Dadar who treated me as a king and with full respect even when I was a small customer considering both my age(must be ten years ago) and my purchase. Ditto about the guy near Maharaja at Kormangala who treated me with a smile even when all I bought was a 50 paise envelope. But then customer service is a term not heard by many. Nirmal and me had been to Udipi Garden(BTM,Bangalore) a few days ago for dinner. This is where I mostly have my dinner on Sundays. The usual norm here is that you are served a finger bowl at the end of yor meals only if you had ordered for some Punjabi dishes or North Indian meals. Nirmal had ordered for a NI meal whereas I went for Pav-Bhaji. The waiter got only one figer bowl and placed it in front of Nirmal. Not that I love washing my hands in a finger bowl, but their attitude sucked. Another example where the customer was not treated as a king and the SLA violated was at the Tribhuvan theatre where I went to watch Parineeta. The A/C was switched off because there were not many people in the hall. I understand that putting the A/C on might not make business sense for them, but then they should not advertise it as a fully A/C theatre. Incidents like these are innumerable. In one case, I was charged a few bucks more than the MRP as freezing charges for a cold drink. Not to enter into a big argument, I asked him whether he did the same for the ice creams. In one case, when I was about 10 years old, I was given a one year old sauce bottle after carefully scraping the manufacturing date with a blade at Brijwasi. After my parents discovered what had happened, they sent me back to 'fight back' and I shouted loudly in front of other customers and got full refund and rightly so. And I thought I was giving these people the opportunity to serve me.