Unfortunately, here in Riyadh, my enjoyment is sometimes cut short because of bad customer service and by people who seem to have no idea what a queue is for. Last Saturday, for instance, I fell in line behind one woman to pay for two items I had picked up. She had a bunch of stuff and the cashier was taking forever to scan the tags. When I thought he was almost done, one of the her companions came and plopped down another bunch of clothes onto the table. That annoyed me a little but I kept my cool. While the cashier was sorting through it, another girl came and added more to the already large pile and I began to feel my ears heat up. I started tapping my foot, cleared my throat loudly and when one of them turned her head around, I gave her a scathing glare and she immediately averted her eyes.
So, there I was waiting for the cashier to be done with the Gorgons when this funky-smelling mother-and-daughter tandem brashly squeezed through my left side and placed their items right alongside my own on the counter. I snapped an "excuse me" at her but it fell on deaf ears. By this time, I was really quite infuriated. And when the cashier grabbed one of the clothes she had put down, I couldn't take it any longer and gave the cashier an earful. I told him, in a mix of Arabic and English, that he'd already allowed two other people to cut the line with the pretense that it was only one shopper's stuff but I wasn't about to let another person get ahead of me again. Hadn't he heard of first come, first served? Just because I wasn't a local didn't mean I was exempted from getting good service. He looked surprised then apologized profusely. I was waiting for the woman to protest so I could bite her head off, too, but she kept quiet. The cashier said sorry again as he handed me my shopping bag and I stomped out. :@
And that wasn't the first time that I encountered a situation like that. It happens a lot at fast food counters, too. Some locals seem to believe they have the privilege of skipping and cutting lines while a lot of salespeople and service crew, who are mostly foreigners, let them get away with almost anything at the expense of other expats which is just wrong. *SIGH*
Thankfully, I ended up taking home a good haul and it was enough to make me get over the aggravation I felt.
Mood Music: Happy Shopper by 60 Ft Dolls
ayayay! i hate shoppers like that too. when we were in shanghai naman, we observed that most of locals dont have a bloody idea of what a queue is for. it happened almost everywhere, in restaurants, malls, in immigration, etc. and when you tell them you were there first, they'd ignore you and pretend they don't understand you. gggrrrr...
ReplyDeleteKairita.com sobra! I guess we're used to Filipinos being very courteous most of the time that's why it's hard to deal with people who seem to have none.
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