A few of us sat with a friend of ours who was visiting after quite a lot of time. The treatment wasn’t anywhere close to what you wanted it to be. The place having stayed in business for quite a long time you’d have expected a gold-medal treatment. No, that wasn’t the case. And we have a visitor who has been away for much longer than a decade and we wanted him to have a real good time. In the first time it took them some time before anybody came to take our orders. Once our orders were given it took them so long that one of us has to bang the table.
A rather short heavyset woman comes and before she could even ask what was the case this guy showers with a barrage of words practically cutting her to her size for the way they treated us. This time it seems we really got their attention. She goes rushes to the kitchen and when she returned a few minutes later she was in the most cordial mood splashing her apologies literally all over our table. She says some problem happened in the kitchen and delayed the chefs and our orders would arrive in a few minutes. With that she leaves and several heartbeats later our orders arrive. Aha! Now we at least would do justice to our screaming just summarized it with, none of us could go as far as a quarter of our dish. It was that bad. Without much more fuss we practically fled the place.
When they make you feel you don’t really count, no pain could be more acute! Through their actions they’re telling you “You’re inconsequential; you’re no one!” But then when you experience much more than your fair of such mistreatments, and when push goes to shove, injustices you tend to try to fit in. Fit in! Yes fit in. Meaning that you just try to act as if nothing happened when you order and they serve you something which looks like the blackest of coffees in the business.
“What’s this?”
“I beg your pardon!” A waitress who answers using a complete sentence! That’s not bad.
“What the hell is this? I ordered tea and not this…this, whatever it is!”
“But that’s tea!” That’s one surprised waitress, isn’t she? She’s not surprised that you’re served something so unsightly in place of tea complaining for being served the place’s favorite tea!
I mean, they’re here to serve as well as we expect to be served. And it gives you the worst kind of shivers when they try to treat you as if you were somewhere you’re wanted and the only thing you’d be doing creating problems say maybe beg for alms! (“Beg for alms!” Did I just say that! Yes, I did. Especially if you’re dressed in the most casual way meaning those cheaper clothes of the Sunday markets you’d be subject to those evil, and conspiratorial side glances. One very sad thing about our society is that if you’re too casually dressed it means you are carrying around the thinnest of wallets in your pockets. And there is no part which makes it your obligation to play ball with this group or that.
Lunch having been a nonevent we sat for coffee at another place where our discussions went into what our experience at the dinning place. The two of us locals tried to shrug it off with,”What the hell can you do while such things happen to be the norm in many places. It seemed we’ve already thrown the towel into the ring when it comes to treatment not only the service and entertainment industry but also in our more serious official dealings too.
Our table-banging friend was having none of it. While he never set a single foot out of Addis let alone the country he says, “We are tax payers; and it’s because of us they get their salaries.” Wow! (I’m not fond of that term as it has been misused so brutally around here it has lost whatever color it had!) Now this guy is playful and he enjoyed spicing up our more serious discussions or even the most nonsense of talks some humor.
This time humor was the last thing on his mind. He goes into some impassioned narrative saying the public should have had enough of such mistreatment and gone into action. And what does he mean by that? Well, he says we just should boycott such places and put them out of business. Well, you could call that a meaningful suggestion. But what about the unintended results like thousands who regularly dine out! So it might be easy to make such suggestions when you’re not forced to dine outside and the hot dish is on the table before you even go through your front door. There are bachelor and bachelorettes who couldn’t even fry a single egg let alone a whole dinner.
Our visiting fried was so excited that he gave a high five to our table-banger. “I didn’t know people have started using that in this country! You people are catching up fast.” Oh that’s what you think? The other friend starts telling him that wasn’t the case and our table-banger friend was the exception. Even he never uses it in the places he should. He asks our visiting friend if he heard the guy using that phrase in that dining place.
“So what!” Our visiting friend wasn’t letting us go that easily. “The most important thing was the realization that it is the only way you can stand up to mistreatments. You’ve to know it is indeed with your tax money the millions of service givers are paid their salaries and you should be more confrontational to ensure your rights are respected.”
But that is in America and it doesn’t work here.”
Why doesn’t it work! Did the society really try?”
It was turning into an argument which we couldn’t fully understand, win or even make any sense of. He goes to tell us that across the oceans the phrase “I’m a tax payer;” was a very lethal weapon with which you make sure your rights are respected. But does it mean what works over there could work here as well. It could; why not! But changing attitudes is a lifelong process even if it sounds a self-defeating attitude the fact is that being what we’re now it’d take us quite a while to come anywhere close to that. The irony of it all that you’re mistreated in certain places and when the bill comes a Tyson furious punch wouldn’t have been so painful!
BY EPHREM ENDALE
The Ethiopian Herald November 3/2024