One last breakfast here and I’m checking out. I am looking forward to my egg, cheese and chili-pepper omelet. Happy expectation is the root of all disappointment, but worse, it places one in a false sense of comfortable security.
They changed the shifts, and who should greet me with a smile first thing as I walk into the restaurant? It is Bob. Bob the guy who finally wrestled a tip out of this tightwad. Bob the even more grateful and now my best friend waiter. This morning “diet coke?” is not just a greeting, it’s an excited expectation. He’s got a gleam in his eye that is making me very nervous. I could say that this isn’t what I paid for but that would be both ironic and wrong.
In America the wait staff pays attention to you and tries to anticipate your needs – the good ones do anyway. They try and balance interrupting your meal with making sure you’re not lacking anything. In India, at least so far as I’ve experienced, this isn’t quite the same. More often you need to flag down a waiter, and so far my experience has been that you’ve got a 75% chance of the waiter remembering to bring you what you asked. Asking again doesn’t seem to be too unusual.
Well today, things are different. Bob is making rounds where he can pass by my table and ask if I need any more diet coke. I probably could have scored a 12-pack if I were prepared to take it with me today. That’s all well and good but now not only am I feeling like I’ve got a potential “life partner” candidate trying to vie for my acceptance, I’ve also got the problem that I tipped him last night and now he’s likely wondering if I’ll set him up for the weekend with another tip. I do not intend to, especially since all I’ve got in my wallet are 500 notes and the breakfast bill here is going to amount to a whopping 200 rupees at best.
What to do? Well, as I see it there are two options. I can tip him what amounts to roughly $7.50 on a $3 bill, or I can go back to not tipping. What I do NOT want to do is deal with looks of disappointment, or worse, demands for explanation. I also don’t want to reward him more than he deserves, since in truth all week he’s been earning his “service charge” already on the bill, and not much more in my opinion.
So I get the bill and watch him out of the corner of my eye until he is about to go into the kitchen. I quickly sign for room charge and, leaving no tip, rush out. Last night I felt good leaving the restaurant. Now I feel like a thief who steals from the poor.
One chuckle I did have to myself while sitting in the restaurant for breakfast was that there was an older guy sitting next to me. Not Indian but Caucasian. I didn’t hear him speak so can’t say where he might hail from as home. However, I was sure of one thing. This dude was either brave (or acclimated) or in for a special surprise later on. His breakfast included baked beans and coffee. Some folks will understand that coffee is itself a bit of a laxative, but combine that with the water here AND the baked beans, and this guy was prepping for an experience scientists will be talking about centuries from now when they exhume bodies frozen and preserved, still in the position they were sitting in while eating breakfast when the extinction level event occurred.
The plan today is to head to a different SAP campus via taxi where I will meet with some different teams. SAP has arranged a cab to pick me up and drive me there, so all I need to do is check out and wait in the lobby for the cab. This checking out is one last conversation I’m not looking forward to. Why? Because I do not intend to complain about the room, and neither do I like lying, and they always ask “how was your stay” and “was everything perfect about your room” and loaded questions like that.
This time, having had a week to prepare for this, I am in fact asked this question and my response, albeit one which has the potential for follow-up questions that I wish to avoid is: “it was good enough.”
And as I hoped, that answer was good enough for them.
The cab ride to the SAP campus is yet another of those terrifyingly fascinating experiences. This is rush hour in Bangalore. I’ve described traffic several times before and so won’t go into the details again. Suffice it to say that my driver was amazing. I had taken some pictures of the traffic but a still picture just looks like a bunch of vehicles. You have to see them moving in chaotic patterns, unpredictable and varying of speed, location and intent in order to truly appreciate what Bangalore traffic is like.
It was an hour drive (mainly because of traffic) and it was so overwhelming that after about 30 minutes of being fascinated, I had to start looking away as it was too stressful. Now, you add to that some Bangalore Blast rumblings in the gut and you multiply that stress 10x.
Fortunately for all, we arrived at our destination without any incidents – traffic or otherwise.
They changed the shifts, and who should greet me with a smile first thing as I walk into the restaurant? It is Bob. Bob the guy who finally wrestled a tip out of this tightwad. Bob the even more grateful and now my best friend waiter. This morning “diet coke?” is not just a greeting, it’s an excited expectation. He’s got a gleam in his eye that is making me very nervous. I could say that this isn’t what I paid for but that would be both ironic and wrong.
In America the wait staff pays attention to you and tries to anticipate your needs – the good ones do anyway. They try and balance interrupting your meal with making sure you’re not lacking anything. In India, at least so far as I’ve experienced, this isn’t quite the same. More often you need to flag down a waiter, and so far my experience has been that you’ve got a 75% chance of the waiter remembering to bring you what you asked. Asking again doesn’t seem to be too unusual.
Well today, things are different. Bob is making rounds where he can pass by my table and ask if I need any more diet coke. I probably could have scored a 12-pack if I were prepared to take it with me today. That’s all well and good but now not only am I feeling like I’ve got a potential “life partner” candidate trying to vie for my acceptance, I’ve also got the problem that I tipped him last night and now he’s likely wondering if I’ll set him up for the weekend with another tip. I do not intend to, especially since all I’ve got in my wallet are 500 notes and the breakfast bill here is going to amount to a whopping 200 rupees at best.
What to do? Well, as I see it there are two options. I can tip him what amounts to roughly $7.50 on a $3 bill, or I can go back to not tipping. What I do NOT want to do is deal with looks of disappointment, or worse, demands for explanation. I also don’t want to reward him more than he deserves, since in truth all week he’s been earning his “service charge” already on the bill, and not much more in my opinion.
So I get the bill and watch him out of the corner of my eye until he is about to go into the kitchen. I quickly sign for room charge and, leaving no tip, rush out. Last night I felt good leaving the restaurant. Now I feel like a thief who steals from the poor.
One chuckle I did have to myself while sitting in the restaurant for breakfast was that there was an older guy sitting next to me. Not Indian but Caucasian. I didn’t hear him speak so can’t say where he might hail from as home. However, I was sure of one thing. This dude was either brave (or acclimated) or in for a special surprise later on. His breakfast included baked beans and coffee. Some folks will understand that coffee is itself a bit of a laxative, but combine that with the water here AND the baked beans, and this guy was prepping for an experience scientists will be talking about centuries from now when they exhume bodies frozen and preserved, still in the position they were sitting in while eating breakfast when the extinction level event occurred.
The plan today is to head to a different SAP campus via taxi where I will meet with some different teams. SAP has arranged a cab to pick me up and drive me there, so all I need to do is check out and wait in the lobby for the cab. This checking out is one last conversation I’m not looking forward to. Why? Because I do not intend to complain about the room, and neither do I like lying, and they always ask “how was your stay” and “was everything perfect about your room” and loaded questions like that.
This time, having had a week to prepare for this, I am in fact asked this question and my response, albeit one which has the potential for follow-up questions that I wish to avoid is: “it was good enough.”
And as I hoped, that answer was good enough for them.
The cab ride to the SAP campus is yet another of those terrifyingly fascinating experiences. This is rush hour in Bangalore. I’ve described traffic several times before and so won’t go into the details again. Suffice it to say that my driver was amazing. I had taken some pictures of the traffic but a still picture just looks like a bunch of vehicles. You have to see them moving in chaotic patterns, unpredictable and varying of speed, location and intent in order to truly appreciate what Bangalore traffic is like.
It was an hour drive (mainly because of traffic) and it was so overwhelming that after about 30 minutes of being fascinated, I had to start looking away as it was too stressful. Now, you add to that some Bangalore Blast rumblings in the gut and you multiply that stress 10x.
Fortunately for all, we arrived at our destination without any incidents – traffic or otherwise.
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