Do you care for the balance amount?

Like most people, I have also come across store keepers and sales persons acting like they actually own the store and that people who walk  in are actually beggars in disguise.Hence I do not seek help finding anything in any shop. I prefer malls to shop with the sole intention of avoiding these ego heads in uniforms. However, I recently had a very different kind of experience.

I walked into a mothercare store to get a spare part for my son’s Avent bottle. I picked a set and went to the billing section. This item was priced at 2.9 rials and I gave the cashier 3 rials. He then packed it and handed over the item to me in a mothercare signature cover. I waited. The cashier looked at me and at the customer behind giving me a cue that I should move out of the queue. Had he forgotten basic mathematics, or basic rules of a cashier is not known so I continued, ‘Balance?’ And he gave me a look. A look that said ‘How cheap can you be to be waiting for a 100 baiza balance!” and hesitantly handed me the 100 baiza note with a smirk.

Obviously the other celebrity customers at mothercare do not care about 100 baizas. But how can this birdbrain think that ALL customers fall into that category? Please, 100 baizas are important to me! If it was a hotel and he did some kind of service, fine, we have a very humane concept called a tip. But definitely not in a regular retail store. It was enough that this was a branded store and each and every single piece of thread was overpriced here. And what was that look that this guy gave me? I mean, does he deserve to give me that look? Does he? If he did, would he be trying to ROB a customer for a mere 100 baizas? And for your information, 100 baizas in Oman is a good 16 Rupees in India! I walked out of that store, fuming. I just wanted to take one of those potty chairs at mothercare and slam it on his head. I wish there was some used potty chair for that. Or one which was in use.

The incident reminded me of a bus ride in Bangalore when I handed over a twenty rupee note for a 2 rupee ticket and the conductor told me that he will give me the balance ‘later’ and when the LATER came, he refused to have any eye contact with me or anybody. When my destination stop came I asked him the balance and he refused to give it to me. This was one sick moron. People like this are everywhere. And the mark of these morons is that, they are completely shameless.  

Another disgusting thing about these sales persons is ignorance about the product or service that pays them. At apparel stores, whenever I approached the sales person for another size or color of a dress I liked, they always sluggishly said ‘Ma’am this is the last piece’ and I always end up finding the second last and the third last pieces. Lazy donkeys. I believe that the line ‘May I help you’ sarcastically written across their shirts is as good as writing ‘Maintain Silence Please’ inside a pub. Oh how cute are the street vendors who go ‘madam madam…. Look at this dress… it will suit you so well…madam 100 rs less just for you..’ even if they don’t mean it. 

I know I have already written about the same subject recently but sorry L I had to mention this mothercare incident.

And in other news, popular(!) Bollywood actress Kangana Renaut launched a website to connect with her fans. The good news is, she will also be sharing style tips! Check out her ultimate fashion sense from a birthday bash that happened last week.

Apparently, eyebrows are out of fashion. Too bad, I just got them shaped last week. 

P.S: Getting style tips from Kangana is completely the reader’s choice. 

I will not be responsible for any damage to eyebrows, eyesight, etc.

Playgroup Files..

Few days ago we played the songs from ‘Kites’ at home. Just like that.

 The next day I spotted my two year old on the sofa, laid back and legs crossed, singing ‘Zindagi…’ ! The only thing missing was a bottle of beer for that Devdas effect.

 

Zindagi....Do pal ki...

The transition from daycare to play group has been obvious in the verbal front. Like potty time and bath time are infused with enchanting nursery rhymes( not very apt to the situation, though). But we are not complaining. That however doesn't mean that everything is fuss-free. Taking off the pajamas before bath is the toughest part which usually the hubby handles. Mostly Kolaveri Di takes care of it. (More power to Kolaveri Di. I don’t know what I’d do without it).But there are days even Dhanush fails to entertain. That is when the bunnies at Bunny party arrive. We have different songs for the varying degrees of fussiness, which in turn proves that we are masters of the art, in raising tough babies whose main motive is to make life difficult. No offense to any babies whatsoever by why do they fuss!

Dropping him at school on mornings is a strength test between my clothes and his fist. Letting his fist win is turning up at office in torn clothes. That wouldn't have any effect on my appraisal though. There are no cries or screams accompanied with this pulling of clothes and clinging on, but it is only a ritual he practiced since his first day there.  In the evenings, the hesitation is to go home. By this behavior his nanny might have thought that we are subjecting him to child labor or something.

When he was in daycare, he had a cute female play mate. Her cute face was only a guise- she was in fact a female baby goon and my son was scared of her. The very sight of this girl made him go WAAAAAAAAHHHH which burst the eardrums of a few sleeping babies. He thought of her like a ferocious Rottweiler. But one day I sneaked in at snack time and found him eating French fries from her tiffin. Obviously there seems to be no fear while stealing junk food. End of the day I look like the bad, bad mother who packs scrambled eggs and steamed bananas in his tiffin. Damn good eating habits. I was told by his nanny that the little female goon was very fond of my son's lunch which generally consists of rice. End of the month the goon gains height, weight and intelligence like the kids in bright orange t shirts in those Horlicks ads. My son is that kid in grey t shirt who never grows because he generously distributes his lunch to junk food eaters.

Waking up at 5:00 am and packing a wholesome lunch to – God knows who. That must be some destiny I am living.  Anyway I pack a bit extra food so that no one is hungry after lunch time. Sigh. Babies are thankless. Really. They take everything for granted. Wait till I send him to hostel when he is 20. I will NOT be answering any PHONE calls either.   

So today morning as I dropped him at school, the teachers were warming up the kids by singing action songs. It was a song that my son knew too.. soon he joined them, but later walked to the side of the room and started hanging out with few other toddlers and laughing. That is an early sign of a backbencher syndrome. Oh well, considering the fact that both his parents were notorious backbenchers I don’t expect an Einstein of him.

The goodbyes that are painful...

If I refer to all the females in my family (including me) as ‘drama queens’, it would be an understatement. We strongly believe that if a daughter to goes on a picnic she may never come back, or buying a two wheeler to a son is like gifting him death. So you get an idea. Every single thing is blown out of proportion and every event like marriage, birthday, and graduation is laced with tears and filmy dialogues and thus dampened. I grew up in such a fiercely loving yet slightly dramatic home, and even though I am way better in terms of drama, I seem to carry traces of what was generously bestowed upon me.

However I was married into a family where people are not as dramatic as us. Goodbyes here are more matter-of-fact and met with more smiles than tears. So my belief that my family had the most complex DNAs which made them brutally sensitive and that they were the first of its kind to have ever walked the earth only got stronger. I reach for the tissue during any movie that has got anything remotely to do with emotions. I fought tears and lost when my son got vaccination shots. The first two weeks of my son’s first daycare was when I ran short of words and tears or even breath. However I was strong enough to hold my own and not broadcast it to the rest of the family for obvious reasons.

This morning I dropped my son at the playschool when I heard loud wails from outside. A boy, around four, had been enrolled and it was his first day there. Two people had to stop him from running to his mother, who walked away hesitantly with her two younger kids. The child refused to pay heed to any act of consolation, and got too wild and loud to handle. Other children including my own stood perplexed and helpless.  We slowly left, even though my heart went out to the boy, who was evidently kept home till that day. As I stepped outside, the mother waited with a miserable look on her face. 

She asked me,’ Is he still crying?’. 

I said ‘Yes’.

She went up to her car, placed the youngest baby carefully on a car seat, fastened the seat belts for the other child and got on to the driver’s seat. 'Wow', I said. 'She must be the iron lady or something'. As we started the car to go to office I took one last look of the mother who was still in her car. She held a ball of tissues and was crying profusely. She kept wiping her eyes and slowly rested her head on the steering wheel. 

My heart melted.

The mother. Her undying love. Care.  Tears.  Worries. 

 You do not call that sensitive. It is what mothers are all about. 

I think I misunderstood my family.  

Oprah Winfrey : The costly refusal.

Last time Oprah Winfrey made news, was when she visited India and met the most accomplished people here who are none other than the ones in Bollywood. As she sat across the table for dinner, she famously asked ‘I hear that some people in India STILL eat with their hands?’ Then, it was a terrible shame that Madam Winfrey dint know that a majority of us Indians STILL cannot afford food.

Today as I glanced through the news, I came across this racism controversy of Ms.Winfrey. A shamefully ignorant clerk at an upscale store in Switzerland refused to show a purse worth $38000, (named after Jennifer Aniston), to her because he felt she may not be able to afford it.

This is 'that' bag!

This is completely believable. I have always told my friends this, when you go to buy clothes, that is when you should be dressed your best. Because wood headed sales guys often assess you with what you are wearing and your chances of finding an attire of your taste depends on that.  This was during a time before malls came into our lives and allowed us to choose what we wanted. When I was younger there were shops in which clothes were neatly stacked in cupboards and sales guys across a counter would pick them and display based on their mood.  If you are not very attractive in their eyes, you will end up buying a reject. This is a painful truth. Storekeepers measure you by what you wear and how presentable you look.

So Ms. Winfrey was not talking on her show and therefore might have turned up at this unfortunate Swiss store dressed for comfort. This is not about the ignorance of that guy who was unable to recognize her. Whether she can afford it or not is not the point either. It is the question of the basic right of a person at any store that has stuff on display. Anything should be accessible to the person who has walked into the store - without having to meet any prerequisites. The customer needn't arrive in a limousine walking like it was a red carpet event.

I have met rude and highly self-esteemed teenagers and young adults who literally have grown head phones from their ear lobes working as sales persons and delivery boys at various brand outlets. They are veterans in belittling customers and treating them like dirt. I have also seen sales persons at showrooms passing their comments and giggling at potentially vulnerable customers who try on the clothes displayed. I am a programmer by profession, and my codes do not expect me to smile at them, but I know the basic code of conduct expected of a person who is in the sales business. Do you or do you not feel like stepping into that store once again, where you were treated like a King with faces around that smiled gracefully and talked politely? Is it so difficult to show minimum civility to any person for that matter? You may not sell a Chanel or a Louboutin, but people are drawn to you by the way you treat them. And they will come again by how much you care about their purchase.

I am sure that poor guy at the Swiss store might have been fired and made to go through a list of Celebrities alive as on August 2013. It is not about being a celebrity. I may not be Oprah Winfrey or Jennifer Aniston, but today if I walk in to a Hummer showroom and ask to be shown a H1, I should be granted the opportunity.

 So this time, I guess Oprah was right when she said that she was snubbed.

Alternatively, she could have asked,’ Do people in Switzerland STILL find this bag expensive?’