Years ago, my brother from the other mother— Ssekandi Ssegujja Ronald plus a few other colleagues, and I went to a hitherto “popular-eating-joint” at Pioneer Mall to discuss matters of national importance. For the sake of professional courtesy, I shall refrain from mentioning the name of the place. We were welcomed by a barrage of buzzing irritating disgusting visibly hungry-angry green-blue vampire-like terrestrial beings commonly referred to as houseflies. Now we would have walked out in protest of the sorry state of sanitation in this place but we chose to proceed to a table nearby because the matters we were meeting about were very important and of utmost urgency and time was not in our favor. Looking around, the place was filled to near capacity. The green-blue vampire-like creatures were all over the place, but surprising, the people never seemed to bother. They all went up and about with their activities without any concern —eating, drinking, staring, writing, reading, laughing, hugging, and kissing (Okay. I lie. No kissing. But well, who knows. Maybe they were doing it in their minds. After all a mind of a person is like a bag. Only the owner knows its contents) etc. At the table, we start discussing the agenda of the day. Ten minutes. Twenty minutes. Twenty five minutes and there was still no sign of a waiter or waitress coming to attend to us. Maybe they’re overwhelmed by the huge numbers of customers so we thought. We cut them some slack. Gave them a benefit of doubt and kept telling ourselves that one will be appearing soonest. Thirty minutes later and a waiter appears. We gave him a piece of our minds and demanded to know why it had taken so long for someone to come and attend to us. He became angry. He seemed to have taken it personal. We couldn’t care less. We decide that the only thing worth taking from this place are sealed items. So we order for cold sodas. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. Twenty minutes later, the waiter comes back with “boiling-warm” sodas. He had orchestrated his revenge. We lost our cool but we chose to ignore this “no-brain-excuse-of-a-waiter” and sipped the warm sodas. No sooner had the last person to finish sipped the last drop of soda than the waiter appeared and asked that we leave and create room for other customers who had nowhere to sit. Now this was it. He had taken his personal vendetta against us too far. He had crossed the line. You do not tell an enthusiastic ambitious student of law (Ronald) as he was then (He’s now a lawyer) and an ambitious free thinker (as I was then and still am now) to ILLEGALLY vacate a table. He had thrown a stone in a bee hive. Using a mixture of technical legal lingual and psychological anecdotes, we intimidate, threaten and tell him “to back the hell off” lest he faced undesirable repercussions. Beaten into submission, the waiter vanishes only to return later with some other man whom we gathered could be his boss—the chief waiter or something of sorts. We could have explained the situation to this boss hadn’t there been a communication problem. The guy could barely speak English or Luganda so we couldn’t understand each other. He spoke some other local dialect. In the meantime, we were finished with the matters we had gone there to discuss so we just stood up and left. It was also common knowledge that the Manager of that place was an Indian. Suffice it to say, that had we escalated our situation to him, and knowing how no nonsense at business Indians are, the waiter and the “chief-waiter” would have been fired or suspended or their wages slashed in the twinkling of an eye because logically, if we received such treatment, imagine how many more people had received the similar poor customer service and being taken for granted from this waiter. We chose kindness and sympathy over reason. We thought about his children, his wife, and his dependents. What would he tell them when he got fired? What would he feed them with? How would he make ends meet? For that reason alone, we walked away without making a scene. We walked away without teaching this guy a lesson of a lifetime…. Needless to say that that was my first and last time to ever set foot in that place. It’s been ages. I hope they have improved—both in customer service and hygiene…. Flash forward. 2013. Remembering that escapade, I can’t help but ask myself how many Ugandans are victims of poor customer service. It’s amazing the amount of bull crap we Ugandans can take from people who are supposed to be giving us a service. How many of us have entered a restaurant and the waiter/waitress is rude and we just sit back, relax, let it pass and it just keeps going on and on and on. How many of us have entered a restaurant/bar and no one comes to attend to us and we patiently wait and when they finally appear, we do not utter any discontentment--like it’s business as usual? How many of us have succumbed to the rudeness of some receptionists and we just smile like it’s perfectly okay? How many of us have gone to that retail store and attendant unashamedly ignores us as she Facebooks or Tweets or Whatsapps God-knows-who or God-knows-what and we simply calmly wait for her to finish? How many of us have allowed ourselves to be packed like a pile of cabbages or a herd of disoriented pigs in taxis that’s clearly labeled “authorized to carry only 14 passengers”? How many of us are bullied by giant companies or establishments and we simply keep quiet and relentlessly whine as our hard earned money keeps being chopped? How many of us are frequent victims of counterfeit products from people/retail stores/shops we know very well yet we do not have the guts to confront the perpetrators of these criminalities? Matter of fact. We Ugandans take in a lot of bull crap. We are taken for granted by people who are supposed to be giving first class attention. Many of us simply resign and allow ourselves to be treated with the highest degree of disrespect and utter disregard for the philosophy that “the customer is boss”. Why should one hustle making money, and then hustle spending it? It defeats any grain of logic. Waiter—I don’t care whether you fought with your girlfriend the previous night. I don’t care whether some girl dumped you the previous day. I don’t care whether you’re not at good terms with your boss. When I come to restaurant, put all that behind you and give me a five star customer service. Waitress/receptionist— I don’t care whether you missed an episode of one of those funny soaps yester-night. I don’t care whether that character you fantasize and hallucinate about in that soap was killed in yester-night’s episode. I don’t care whether you caught your boyfriend with another girl the previous night. I don’t care whether your boyfriend forgot your birthday yesterday. I don’t care whether I don’t care whether your boyfriend last told you you are beautiful months ago. I don’t care whether your boyfriend doesn’t remember your anniversary. I don’t care whether your boyfriend called you by another girl’s name. I don’t care whether your boyfriend forgot to send you a “have a nice lunch” text. I don’t care whether your boyfriend this…your boyfriend…hahahaha. (98% of the time, it’s always about some boy. The things girls get pissed about. Shaking my head…. ). I don’t care. All I need is good customer service. Big company—I don’t care whether you’re one of the biggest companies. I don’t care whether your portfolio touches heaven and back. I don’t care whether you have access to state house as and when you want. All I need from you is proper customer service and timely resolution of my issues. So fellow Ugandans, next time that waiter/waitress/receptionist etc treats you with disrespect, give them a piece of your mind and if they can’t understand, escalate the issue to their bosses and if they too, can’t seem to comprehend, just walk away. There are so many other service/product providers who will welcome you with open hands and treat you like the boss. Finally, I repeat. You hustle making money. Why should you hustle spending it? Spending money should be a smooth flawless cloud eleven moment…. For more escapades, visit my blog thelooseend.wordpress Wamala Emmanuel Ssonzi Rashydah Sarah Maseruka Allan Chris Obore Henry Ndugwa Mark Amanda Vivian Bbosa Diana Nantongo Adee James Onen
Posted on: Sat, 17 Aug 2013 04:38:59 +0000
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