Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Late night customer service

Saturday night, very starving, convenient fast food joint across the road.
Forgetting the fact that the place was the doldrums and probably maintained the same level of hygeine of a used nappy, I was hungry so went to purchase some substance cunningly disguised as food.
As a waited for the greasy handed, hairnet-less, *cough* cheerful staff to prepare my meal, another customer, slightly worse for the wear comes in and is only physically able to order his meal by stabbing his finger blindly at a menu, my presumption being any movement of his mouth would result in a torrent of vomit flying out.
Next in (yes I did wait quite a while) was a couple of guys who clearly weren't at ease with our language. They managed to order the meal but forgot the magic word.
The stubby chav-woman behind the till glares, chewing her gum meaningfully (and loudly) and says 'Do you not say please?'
After some confusion the men repeat their order (and they are actually saying thank you) and again the response is 'Do you not say please?'
They look confused, bewildered and slightly worried to eachother, wondering what they'[ve done wrong and it would be blatantly obvious to anyone that they just didn't understand, it was clearly not the fact they were inpolite.
She has another try.
'In our country we say please, I take it you people have no manners? Well I'm not serving you'

Being in a retail occupation, this automatically put myself in the situation and I wondered what on earth the consequences would be if I'd have said that to a foreign customer.
This woman clearly has racism issues, especially considering the customer beforehand hadn't just refrained from saying please when ordering but hadn't said anything at all.
It seems that kind of thing is more acceptable at that time of night. Perhaps everyone was too drunk to care but I'd be sacked on the spot, possibly arrested and the company I work for taken to a tribunal and sued if I'd pulled a stunt like that.

2 comments:

Jennytc said...

I'm afraid I might just have had to go into deputy head mode and butt in. That's why I'm not allowed out alone at night. ;)

Wallo said...

I certainly wouldn't have held you back, Jenny!