Keep the customer dissatisfied

Oped Template Chin Wong Final

“SIR, may P5.75 ka ba?” the cashier at the supermarket asked expectantly.

I was paying for a pack of coffee creamer worth P105.75 with a P500 bill. She’s asking me for P5.75 so she could give me four P100 bills in change, rather than go through the coins that I could see were neatly arranged inside her cash register.

She’s making me do the work instead, I thought, as I reached into my pocket. I wouldn’t mind so much if the amount made sense. One peso, for example, but to ask me for P5.75 was too… specific and too big an imposition. I managed to find only P4.25.

“Sorry, eto lang ang coins ko,” I said apologetically.

She ignored my inadequate offer and finally deigned to count out my change.

Sadly, this demand that the customer make change has become common practice among many supermarket and fast-food cashiers.

Maybe this practice was originally born out of a shortage of coins in circulation — but these days, it just seems like a lack of consideration for the customer.

With purchase in hand, I hailed a cab.

I would have used an app on my phone to book a car — but prices for this kind of ride-hailing service have shot up since one company monopolized the business when its only competitor pulled out of the country in 2018. I read a new competitor is coming in this year, but I needed a ride now, not next month. And I was sure as heck not going to jump onto the back of a motorcycle taxi.

“Where are you going?” the cab driver asked in Filipino.

The odor that permeated his vehicle was matched only by its disrepair and his slovenliness. He made a face when I told him where I wanted to go.

“Ay, ma-traffic dyan!” he said, indicating that traffic would be heavy where I was going and that this would somehow inconvenience him. “Dagdagan mo na lang ‘yung nasa metro,” he added, telling me I should pay more than what the meter would show at the end of the trip.

I momentarily considered letting my finger do the talking but thought the better of it and just got off.

In 2022, the services sector contributed about 61.22 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, much more than industry (29.23 percent) and agriculture (9.55 percent). So, if services are such an important part of our economy, why do the consumers of those services get such a bad deal?

In a 14-minute documentary entitled “Powernapper’s Paradise,” the Swedish director Samir Arabzadeh presents a series of portraits of Filipinos sleeping on the job, starting with a security guard sleeping soundly at his post — in daytime.

“I moved from Sweden to the Philippines in January 2009. One of the first things that struck me was how people sleep at work here, something that is completely foreign to me,” the director says on the voiceover to scenes of a burger vendor napping while two patties are sizzling on the griddle; a janitor seated in an alcove, catching a few winks; and a woman tending a carinderia with her eyes closed. “To be honest, it really confuses me. Why is everyone asleep? Why am I awake? What’s going on?”

We’ve all seen scenes like these, but we are so accustomed to seeing them we think nothing of it. But even as we try to find amusement in them, or explain them away by pointing to humid weather and the tradition of the Spanish siesta, we know that sleeping on the job — just like inconveniencing buyers or shaking down the riding public — isn’t the way to keep the customer satisfied.