I daily return from my office at around half past six, and
the moment I put my feet inside the room my stomach starts banging me to feed
it. I have this routine to go out and have some snacks and a cup of tea (a
bachelor has to go out and feed himself :(
anything of his own wish :) lucky
me). Last week I and my roommate decided to try a new place to have evening
snacks and you may not believe it we went to a nearby Hospital canteen, it
might look weird but I have always found hospital canteen as nice and clean, it
doesn't mean that I keep going to hospitals I mean canteens in hospitals but
yeah once or twice is ok as they also serve fine food for normal people. So we
went there and ordered a cheese sandwich and two cups of tea. Sandwich was fine
and to our surprise tea was served in a very large cup. We were expecting a tea
in a cup similar to the nearby stalls in that area because all of the near-by
business competitors or tea-makers follow same norms and even rates are
increased at same time. We thought it might be one or two rupees more and asked
for the final amount to be paid and again to our surprise it was the same price
as six rupees. We did not ask him anything, paid the amount and started walking
towards our place.
“He charged same as the other ones but the cup size was
bigger than anybody else here” My friend started the discussion. I was also thinking
about the same topic about the difference in this shop and our frequent visited
shops.
“Yeah I noticed that and did you see tea was actually
better, I liked it.”
“Yeah me too, and even there were tulsi leaf and black pepper
were also there as catalyst”
“You are right”
We crossed the busy road and remained silent for a while as
how could we know the reason behind this, and no customer would ask reasons for
low profit making to a shopkeeper.
“Did you see that the tea-maker was like an employee???He
was not the owner of the shop”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Did you see he was not concerned about the liking of his
customer or how many customer were there; he was merely concerned about one
thing to serve the customer as per the order and as per the instructions given
to him. It seemed what I believe that he was concerned about the salary that he
would receive at the end of the month. He did not give a damn how many
customers visit the shop and whether the shop is making profits???His job must
be restricted to giving daily sales to the owner and that must be all”
“May be you are right, but how does it relate to customers
getting a better tea in big cups”
“It could have been like
a shop owner started the canteen and hired a person to look after it. He
did not take care about his competitors. The hired employee took concern only
about his fixed salary irrespective of the profits of the shop. Now this is by
chance that the hired employee makes a good tea and also adds extra ingredients.
If he would have not been good in making a tea even then the shop would have
continued to serve the same tea with whatsoever profits”
My friend looking agreed to the justification said, “You are
right but do you think this will continue for a long time”
“I also can’t say anything about it, as it entirely depends
on owner’s business interest. May be the canteen is his secondary or tertiary
business and actual earning business could be something else”
My friend taking a pause then finally said, “This strikes me
another thought that all the big shops around us in malls have the employees
sitting and managing the shop and not the owner”
“I can guess where you are going to…..”
He continued, “That is why sometimes those shopkeepers don’t
give a damn whether we buy their product or not and do not even try to convince
us”
My friend was right and I also agree to this fact that an
employee sometimes does not give a damn about the owners profit or loss. In
some of these cases even a customer voicing his opinion would not get any
consideration and would remain dissatisfied with the shop. This could even
become more problematic when a customer is forced to buy a product from that
one shop only as the product could be unavailable anywhere nearby.
Looking at the future of India, it seems that a day would
come when there would be no small shops but only malls with an employee
managing the same. Then the customer satisfaction would only depend upon the
employee’s integrity in that shop. One could imagine the satisfaction that a
customer would get in the coming time.
I can just hope that I being a customer would visit the
shops where I would get full value, if not extra, of my hard-earned money.
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