Incompetence, and how..
I just had to pen this down before I forgot…before it became a distant memory of which I could not recall precise details…so that I would give myself a mental kick before feeling too sorry for such people.
I was feeling greedy, (there’s no other way to describe it), and so decided I would pop across the road to either Starbucks or Costa Coffee to get myself a mini cake or something similar. It’s Ramadan, and there was about 40 minutes till fast break – Starbucks was closed, but the lights seemed to be on at Costa Coffee, so I thought I would chance it.
It was open, with absolutely no one but a rather big young man behind the counter. So I told him what I wanted, PAID for it, and asked him to keep it while I popped into the nearby Sultan Center within the same mall. He told me to keep my receipt and show it when I returned. Ok, no problem – the fast was about to break, and he was probably expecting more customers. I finished my miniscule visit at the Sultan Center and went back to Costa’s. Still no customer other than me.
I was not expecting this kind of incompetence. He took my receipt, then proceeded to search for a cake box to put my cake in, which he did not find easily. He then took several minutes trying to assemble the cake box. When that did not work, he looked for another cake box, and then went inside a work area (probably the kitchen) to assemble it. He emerged, and took the cake from the display freezer as if he was handling liquid nitrogen. After putting it into the cake box, he searched, yet again, for a bag to put it in. By this time, even in my broken state, I could have murdered him behind the counter and left the country. He proceeded to hand me the bag with a flourish, as if he was giving me a free meal.
What’s the point of writing this? The reason is that I feel sorry for people like baristas and such, because I see, sometimes, how they are treated, and I always think, “Oh they must have taken this job because the market is bad”, or “They’re just making a living”, and I silently wish them better and more. But this man showed neither initiative nor determination nor was apologetic for his very obvious delay of my single order. I should feel sorry for the people who will show up on his shift today.
And I wonder, is this what the youth of today are like? My God, he didn’t even have to make anything; all he had to do was pack something for me. Wow, what is the future of the world going to be like, if a majority is like him? I come from a time when we made things with our hands, fixed things, had super ideas. And today, with raw materials available aplenty, there’s no logic…have we somehow generated mindless minions? The mind boggles.