Road Travel Woes

As anyone working in Delhi will readily confess, the one thing that gets everbody's goat here is the driving. Experiments such as erstwhile BRT, Odd-even etc make people dream of a time when their travel woes will be shorter.

Delhi is a city under constant construction. The Metro has been at it for the last 15 odd years but at-least in their case people grin and bear it with the hope for a better tomorrow. But what one can never figure out are the incessant road side diggings- akin to treasure hunts! As soon as one agency finishes laying the concrete on the sidewalks - up comes another to dig it right back- PWD, MCD, DJB, MTNL & IGL are the usual culprits. Combined with the Metro's work taking up half the road, there's really not much road to share.

One wonders how many crores could be saved if these agencies just sat together over a cup of tea (Chai pe Charcha!) and made a digging schedule for the next few months. But then maybe its just another way to route public funds through the contractors right back into the planners (the seemingly clueless but deviously able planners!) pockets.

Just as one fumes & fulminates over these random musings, the light changes to green and the cars start crawling again.

Recovery Agents

The clerk from Patiala House Court asked for Ram, the Assistant Manager. When told that Ram was coming in later in the day, he said that non – bailable warrants were being issued against him. The restaurant receptionist hurriedly passed the receiver to me. I asked him what the matter was but he just repeated that this was urgent and then gave me the number of one Ms. Priyanka who he said was the lawyer for the other side and could elaborate. I called the lady who was as elusive as him, refusing to divulge any details unless Ram called her ASAP. Unless the matter was resolved amicably, the court would issue non-bailable warrants against him on Delhi Police’s request, she added.

I called Ram who was clueless and gave him the details. In the meanwhile I called the Proprietor who asked me to keep him in the loop. After 15 minutes Ram called back to say that this was about a personal loan he’d taken and that he’ll explain when he arrives. Meanwhile the law court clerk called again asking if the parties had come to any resolution.

Ram finally arrived and explained that he’d stopped paying installments on a personal loan taken three years ago after just 2-3 installments due to dire financial straits. Eighty percent of the INR 30,000 odd was still due. He’d tried to come to an understanding with the bank but they refused & kept increasing the penalty interest. Ram was apologetic for the mess he was in and promised to resolve it.

I explained this to the Proprietor who said that this wasn’t any of our business and that there was no way a non-bailable warrant could be issued for this. According to him the Bank must’ve outsourced the task to some loan recovery agents, some of whom were pretending to be lawyers & law court clerks.

When the person claiming to be the court clerk called again I raised these doubts, asking him why he should be bothered with this. After all if this matter was listed in court, it would get settled there and whether or not it got resolved/ a party showed up or not shouldn’t concern him at all. He dilly-dallied and hung up.

Shortly thereafter the phone calls started. In one outlet after another abusive women called up, hurling the choicest swear words. I received panic calls and explained to Outlet in charges what the matter was. When I got to talk to one of the callers she threatened dire consequences. Angry, I challenged her to do her best and flatly told her that I felt the whole Patiala Court & Lawyers/Police story was concocted and that that she was in all probability calling from some remote, far-off call-centre. The fact that she was quiet for a moment confirmed my doubt.

The calls started again shortly thereafter but not at our outlet. They finally stopped after Ram  reached a compromise with them to close the matter after paying INR 18,000.

Stone pelting

The mustached gentleman who first informed me about the incident was completely non hyper in his reporting. Like the proverbial lull before the storm, little did I then realize that all hell was about to break loose.

“Someone’s pelting stones from the rooftop”, he repeated, even as I listened to the words in disbelief. It was a busy weekend at the Restaurant with people waiting downstairs, outside the building and near the pavement, to be seated in the Restaurant which was on the first and second floor of the building.

As I hurried to the terrace from the service staircase, the mental image that I had was that of harmless pebbles. Once upstairs I was surprised to find a bespectacled customer already standing near the edge of the parapet, peering down. Surprised, as we don’t have any service up there- because of some outdated municipal regulations- the open terrace is in fact used by our staff to catch some fresh air on their break/mealtimes.

As I looked down I saw a crowd of people looking up angrily. In fact one of them challenged me to come down and explain why we were throwing stones. Taken aback I answered I was just checking what was going on.

The bespectacled person had come up to see who the stone thrower was. We looked around only to find some of the staff on their dinner break with no clue about the commotion downstairs.

As I accompanied him down, there was a lady waiting for him on the second floor, who told him that the stone(s) may have come from the neighboring rooftops. With this piece of reassuring information I walked down with them to the first floor reception area.

As we got down the customer staircase there was a commotion near the cash counter. A heavily built young man, wearing a green tee-shirt was threatening one of the service staff members. I calmly walked up to him to intervene and to inform him this was all a minor misunderstanding.

As he turned to face me, there was this menacing look to him. When I told him about the confusion, he would have none of it and asked me if I was calling him a liar. Before I could retort he pointed to the girl standing next to him who, almost on cue, slightly raised her tee-shirt to show some redness on the side of her stomach. My head was spinning as I realized that the situation was direr than I’d first assumed.

I mumbled to them to accompany me downstairs, to talk to a lady who could clarify this situation. As I walked towards the stairs, the angry young man shouted from behind, asking me to stay. I turned back to them to again ask them to come with me. At that instant I realized that the original mustached gentleman- not so gentle or calm anymore- was standing next to them, a stern look about him.

For some reason the sight of him made me a tad angry, making eye contact I told them again that the confusion could be resolved momentarily if they simply accompanied me downstairs. Suddenly they relented. On reaching the Restaurant entrance downstairs, I was surprised not to find the person who should have been there taking the waiting list. In any case I looked around to try and find the lady who knew that the stones had come from our neighboring roofs.

On spotting her, I asked her to repeat what she’d said upstairs. She now said that she was merely voicing her opinion while there were eyewitnesses who’d seen the stones come from our roof.

As my mind raced to comprehend this, another lady in the crowd showed me the stone that had apparently bounced off the pavement and cut the chin of a child whose parents had then rushed him to a hospital. It was a piece of concrete the size of my fist which from a rooftop it would be a lethal weapon. I was surrounded by angry faces & voices, everyone in the crowd must've been scared that the stone could've landed on their head.

Another person told me that a brick, pieces of which he showed me on the road, had landed on the other side. As I walked through the crowd to look that way, the angry chap in the green tee told me that the brick pieces had splintered on hitting the road, a piece from which had hit his young lady.

At this point I started trying to explain that it was crazy to assume that a restaurant would pelt stones on its waiting customers. In all likelihood, I continued, the stones must’ve come from one of the neighboring roofs, which was desolate. Someone in the crowd shouted from behind that they were sure that the stones had come from our roof, another added that even if they hadn't, it was our responsibility. Someone shouted that there was no point arguing and the police should be called. Another voice from the mob said that the staff on the roof should be brought down so that the truth could be slapped out of them.

I looked at the faces of some of the regulars and continued my attempts at rational dialogue. I kept repeating my argument about the irrationality of their assumption. Realizing that they wanted some action and not mere words I added that I’ll go up and investigate. In the meanwhile the green teed young man started walking away to his car with his friend saying that we should have take care. I nodded at him in agreement. A few of the others too left thereafter.

The person responsible for taking the waiting list suddenly reappeared (It was much later that he told me that he'd had to literally run upstairs as he'd felt he'd be lynched if he stayed when the incident happened). I asked him to call upstairs and check on the table vacancy status. Soon some people started walking upstairs to take their tables.

The original mustached person along with the bespectacled man from the roof then accompanied me upstairs to check on the roof. As I climbed to the reception area I saw some vacant tables and called the waiting chap to send more people up. Simultaneously I made eye contact with the service staff and asked them to remain in their allocated stations. The idea was to reassure them that the situation was slowly coming back to normal.

On the roof we found half a dozen uniformed kitchen staff having their meal. The mustached person asked me to call out all the other staff from inside. I walked to the dining shed, the entrance to which was away from them, and asked the 4-5 kitchen staff there to accompany me to answer the questions related to the incident. They came out and told the duo that they had just for their meal break and as far as they were aware nobody from our restaurant had thrown any stones.

The bespectacled man then tried threatening them with the police but the kitchen staff confidently repeated their answer. The two men looked at each other, each asking the other to call the cops. As I glanced down the parapet I was relieved to see that the crowd had dispersed. The security guard who should've been at the entrance but had been sent on a chore in the evening too had returned (His investigations later found similar stones on the dark and desolate neighboring rooftop)

As I walked them down, I remarked matter-of -factly that this whole situation was ridiculous and there was no way that restaurant staff who depend on customers for their bread and butter would actually throw stones at them. The mustached man’s final meek retort was there could be sick people anywhere.

As we came down to the second level, the bespectacled person’s lady friend was on a table and he joined her. Walking down with the mustached person to the first level I saw several other hostiles having dinner, chatting and laughing. The mob had disbanded.

Man vs Machine

(This is a real-life incident involving a workplace colleague.)

One winter evening, our protagonist went to his friendly neighborhood ATM to withdraw some cash.

As he was studying the transaction slip, the machine suddenly started beeping.

Before he could figure out what was happening, there was a sudden sucking noise & even as he watched in horror, the ATM gobbled up the INR 3000 he had come to withdraw.

Desolate, he complained to his bank and after fifteen long days managed to get the money back in his account.

A lesser man would have kept away from ATMs, at least for a while, but our protagonist was not one to take defeat at the hands of a machine lightly. He decided to go to the same ATM to make another withdrawal.

This time around, without bothering about the transaction slip, he attacked the cash as it came out. Just as he was savoring his victory, the dreaded beeping sound started again.

There had been no time to count the notes - could the deceptive mechanical fiend have gobbled up some part of his cash again?

No, he wasn’t one to allow that to happen. Acting with alacrity he put his hand in the cash dispensing slot, but alas - the mechanical devil was too quick for him, clamping the slot shut in an instant - almost as if trying to chew off his fingers.

Our injured protagonist retreated from the battle ground, bleeding slightly from his index finger. Even in his pain he managed to count the money- and was glad to realize that though the ATM had drawn first blood, it couldn’t steal his money.

Franchisee Pestilence

Ours is a popular chain of Restaurants. Hence it’s no surprise that we receive innumerous Franchisee enquiry calls. The problem is that the owners, for reasons best known to them, just aren’t interested.

This may be because they don’t want to dilute quality (or equity), or perhaps they worry it’ll be a logistical nightmare (unless they decentralise the prep kitchen- which in turn may dilute quality, Catch-22) or perhaps simply because they just aren’t greedy or ambitious enough.

I tried explaining to the callers that the owners weren’t interested but in Delhi, of all places, nobody likes to takes no for an answer, at least not anybody with money (Remember Jessica Lal?).

Initially (after unsuccessfully trying to fob them off) I’d just take down the details of the callers, promising that the owners will get back to them (we didn’t pass on the owners' number to the callers, citing company policy, as we didn’t want him inundated with calls).

Next, I started giving out the company & the owner’s Mail ID but pretty soon people started complaining that no one reverted.

With time the Franchisee calls got more virulent, like a virus that mutates into more dangerous variations. My earlier replies failed against the persistence of the callers, like earlier drugs fail against new strains of influenza.

Pretty soon, I guess, I’ll just have to pretend to be the owner.

Tangy Crumble

A customer called up on the restaurant landline and asked for the Manager. He wanted to complain about a bad dining experience at our central Delhi outlet. He told me he’d gone to have a quick lunch and had ordered chicken pasta in a red wine sauce. He found the chicken to be under cooked and reported the same to the manager who didn’t do anything about it. Also, while leaving he had taken away a slice of apple crumble. On reaching home he found the apple crumble to be very tangy. Disgusted at the experience he decided to call me and complain.

I promised to check on this and call him back. I called up the Central Delhi outlet manager who told me that the customer had finished his food and told him about his issue only during billing. I asked him to check on the apple crumble, which he called back to report as being normally tangy.

I called the customer back. I reported that I’d checked with the manager at our central Delhi outlet and that he remembered the incident. I told him that we encouraged our customers to tell us if a dish was not up to the mark when they took the first bite.

As everything is freshly prepared it can be fixed. Unfortunately in this case the clearance was already done and the complaint was made only during billing. We’ve also checked the apple crumble, which is tangy as it should be since we use tangy green apples for it and add some lemon juice as well.

I added that if in the future he felt that something was not up to the mark he should let us know while he was still eating so the dish could be corrected/replaced.

He said that his wife was a teacher at a hotel management institute and even she’d found the crumble too tangy. I told him that recipes differ and ours was a variation that was very popular with our customers.

Mystery of the screw

I was at the gym during my break shift- rest between shifts- one early evening when my wife came by to hand over my cell phone, which I'd left at home. She said that there had been numerous missed calls and that she had taken one call, apparently from an irate customer. The customer had requested that I call back ASAP.

I checked the missed calls record and called back the Assistant Manager of our Oriental Restaurant. He reported that an incident had taken place during lunch wherein a piece of metal, a screw in fact, had been found in the customer's wok dish. All attempts at pacification had failed and they'd given the customer my direct number.

I immediately called back on the customer’s number and heard him out. According to him there was this ugly, disgusting, old metal screw in his food. Why then should he not report us to the municipal authorities, he fumed. I proffered my apologies and promised to call him back after investigating the incident.

I went to the Oriental place after my break. The problem, apart from the obvious facts, was that in this particular dish there was so little sauce that the chances of something not being detected before being served were remote. Also there would’ve been a metallic noise in the wok had there been a piece of metal while cooking. The pick-up boy who brought it from the kitchen and the actual server were both trustworthy.

What then was the explanation? I decided to place the facts in front of the customer just as I’d found them.

I called him up and explained. ‘We’ve checked the kitchen preparation area, all the sauces & ingredients. The only possible explanation could be that as some maintenance activity had taken place today, this might have fallen in. This is completely bizarre and we’re truly sorry this happened.’

He did not argue, accepted my apology and told me that we ought to be more careful in the future.

The Manager of the Oriental Restaurant, who was not around earlier, felt that the customer might himself have deliberately done this. While this was possible, what did he achieve? Also he’d not been as difficult as he possibly could’ve been.

What then was the answer, the true origins of the screw remain a mystery to date.