I found it funny, funny the way it was written. I laughed and the lady care taker near the door at the Pizza Hut came to me and asked me why I was laughing. Today, it started with more fun. I came to the Pizza Hut at the City Center after registration at the college. I had to eat something nice as yesterday was a day of miseries for me. I caught flu, one of a kind. So, as soon as I got in, the lady I mentioned above, she came and asked whether I need seat for one or two. Same old question. Anyway, I said that I’m alone and grabbed the nearest seat. She dumped the menu cards in front of me and asked me to take my time. I made my mind shortly and ordered one Chicken Supreme Pizza and Cream of Chicken Soup. After a while a pizza hut guy came to me and asked me to change the order because they don’t have the chicken soup. I was unhappy already about the hospitality shown by all the Pizza Hut in Kolkata. Chennai was much better. Kolkata needs to learn a lot about customer service. But all the ill feelings went away when the lady in front of me gave me Garlic Bread for free, she told me it was a complementary as I haven’t got what I ordered and I was waiting for long. I’m not a fond of Garlic Bread, till date I never ordered that by myself but the concern behind it today was reasonable; and then came the guy, the showman of this write-up, The Customer Maniac (“Customer Maniac” Written on His Back). Well, I noticed this guy already since I entered because this one guy was all over the restaurant. The first thing he brought me was Red Pepper Sauce and Black Pepper Dust. What a combo and then there was another guy brought my pizza, the Manic was still standing next to me and asked me and then served be the first quarter of the Pizza, I started eating, he didn’t move, and then he asked how is the food, I replied, It’s fantastic, and then he went away, meanwhile the lady kept coming often, sometime for water, sometime for asking anything else to order or not. Honestly, I felt very special. It was a fun-day for me at Pizza Hut. I was surprised with the hospitality today. Everybody was getting treated well, and Maniac was on the run, I think he was marking all the tables, he was collecting all the plates, pans, tissue papers, serving, billing, taking survey, what a maniac.

***

Customer service in service industries is all about retaining the customers. I would love to get back to the same Pizza Hut after receiving such hospitality. I remember the day of Diwali 2007, I was in Chennai, I went out early, I wanted to spend my whole day at Citi Center and then after sunset I wanted to sit at the Marina Beach to watch the fire-cracker show. I saw the Pizza Hut on the way; it was opened already, very unusual. It always opens at 11 am, but it was only 9 in the morning. I saw all the employees are sitting and on guy was demonstrating them something, kind of class. A hurdle at the Pizza Hut. Everything is getting organized day by day. It definitely increases the efficiency but in a way it reduces an individual’s moral and self-confidence. Nobody wants to take chances. Everybody blindly follows the protocol and the hospitality guys; they just smile at everything like the ramp models. It gives me a weird feeling that is these people have a common boss named the Joker, yeah, the one from the Batman. His quote goes like this, “Let’s put some smile on that face”.

***

There is a mobile phone service provider named Vodafone. The GPRS technical assistance is worst and the guys have fake attitude and doesn’t know how to behave properly. The first line of contact is also pathetic when you call for assistance about GPRS. They don’t even seem to follow a proper script. When you ask for a supervisor, they’ll put you on hold and then after a while either they’ll disconnect the call or they’ll make you disconnect the call after a long hold after all its toll free, whose bothered? I got this hard feeling while configuring one of my friend’s mobile phone which was ‘Fly’ made. The issue remained unresolved until his phone got stolen. I think the automated system works better for Vodafone then the manual part. AirTel on the other hand has one of the better customer services but they have a bad habit of activating value added services without any consent and then they’ll say that it was activated from customer’s end.

***

The waiter at the Crescent Hotel, I used to go, well, somehow he remembers the table and always provided me the same when it was not available he made me wait and provided a free drink. Well, it substantially increased his tip amount but the service was exceptional. At Velu Military hotel, they provide free Mutton Soup which tastes very nice and at most of the Punjabi Dhabas provide a snack called ‘Papad’ with some kind of green ‘Chantni’; they’re kind of apetizers. Barista is famous for their daily specials and recommendation but nothing like that happens at Kolkata. It makes me feel that Kolkata is just about little less than a complete Metro while other Metro are upgrading to Cosmo. There is a guy at Fame South City Kolkata, you may have happened to notice him, he always does something different, he chooses the customer based on his instincts or maybe at random. He’s there at critical times. What he does is that he takes you out of the queue and reduces the miseries. If he’s near food counter, he takes the food order directly on a simple piece of paper and promises you to deliver to you seat and if he’s near box office, he pulls out some kind of handheld device, PDA sort of, and gets you the ticket of your desired choice.

It may not be always be imprinted on the back, but in service industries you’ll always find some Customer Maniac.

Got a lot of work

What you got? This is the question that you may not hear all the time but it always comes to you once in a while, hidden and camouflaged. Each and every response is an outcome of the same question in different format. Consider just anything like teacher asking something to his or her students, of students asking something to the teacher, when you get to a restaurant and ask the waiter or when the waiter shows you the menu. The teacher thinks that I gave students so much of knowledge, so, let’s see what they got and students, sometimes, just for curiosity, they may put a question to the teacher just to know what he or she got. Well, I remember my school days, whenever I found something interesting on the Discovery Channel, I always joyfully discussed with my teacher and there were times when I surprised him and felt little bit proud thinking that I got something more than him. Those were fun days. Now, what goes inside the restaurant is something like, you enter the restaurant and call the waiter just to know what he got to offer and almost in the same manner he shows you the menu just asking you what you got like how much your wallet could afford. Sometimes you may have to face the question alone. I remember a specialty restaurant. It was an Italian Restaurant and they always kept the menu outside the restaurant which is a direct signal that, “Get in only if you got the green”.

***

We live in a world where change is the only constant and whoever got the zeal to adapt is capable to survive. They say “Survival of the fittest” but the fittest ain’t no fit until it is able to adapt and the question persists that has it got the gears to adapt itself. Throughout the long chain of evolution theory represents that the creature size increased from tiny to very large and then keeps shrinking. One research showed that the ears of humans are gradually shrinking because we don’t use them much. Either we talk face to face or through phone. Those far away sounds don’t come to us anymore. We work more in office than fields. So, we got little ears and little mobile phones. Not only that, we got nuclear warheads, laser weapons even hydrogen bomb. Wow, we got our own instinct to destroy each other. That ain’t no good for survival. What else we got? Science and Technology for Development of Mankind, Oh! Well we got Giant Particle Collider to produce anti-matter. We are now so acquainted the matter at all states that we must know now about the anti-matter. Even at this level the patrons are never let the scientist go without answering the question that what you got?

***

It is pretty much cliché that there’s nothing called free lunch. Whatever you want, you got to earn it and to earn you should be aware of what you got. You just can’t go and win gold in Olympic race or swim across an ocean. To do such things you need to prepare physically, mentally, have a goal and a plan to reach the goal. Now, plans don’t work out all the time and you may need to go through many up and downs and hence the question shall again come to you, asking you that do you got the patience or can you handle the failure. It is very important to be prepared be proactive. It is only possible if you have a mind conscious enough to beat the illusions by your sub-conscious mind. The sub-conscious mind shall always show only two things – very good or very bad. But there is something common between those good and bad things; they are far away from reality. That’s why I called those illusions. So the equations is again straight, whether you got mind full of illusions or a healthy mind which takes time and makes a wise decision. The best practice I would suggest is to get a clear picture by writing all the beautiful dreams and worst nightmares.

***

So much for the things you want eh! Now, what about the things you do not want to happen? Frankly, the question remains the same. Have you got the thing to avoid ‘it’? It is just like basic arithmetic. All you need to do is addition. Later on, it goes like this – when subtracting you are actually adding negative stuff, further, multiplying and division are repeated addition of positive and negative respectively. It doesn’t matter what you want, where you go, but the question remains the same. On one particular day, Barack Hussein Obama II got millions of votes and became the president of United States and then he got lot more power and became the most powerful man on earth. He got the White House, it’s a nice place to live. He got control for nuclear warhead too. So, this guy is standing tall due to public support he got but there is an opposition in the Parliament, they’ll never sit peacefully but ask “What You Got”?

It is the answer of the very question which defines a person and nobody can deny that, it always reveals your identity. So, what you got ?

Eating alone! I do not know why I started writing on such topic. Earlier today, she just made a kind of statement that I should find a wife who should be a foodie like me. I laughed. She continued, “It is hard to eat alone”. It was like a switchblade, cut through the walls of my memory. I saw almost all the moments I ate alone. It is not my hobby. Once upon a time I decided I shall never eat alone anymore. But that didn’t work out somehow. When I entered the restaurant today I saw a guy who was about to finish his food, he was alone and he was eating the same food I was supposed to order. It can’t be a hobby, I don’t think that. So, is it a constraint? I washed my hands and took a seat. It wasn’t just getting out of my head and I kept on thinking. I ordered my food and started reading my e-newsletters but I doubt I got any updates today, my mind was stuck somewhere else.

I always got treated well at almost all the restaurants. I remember the waitress at the Chik-King when I was in Chennai, she always used to take my orders and opened door for me when I was about to leave. She was from east, also the kid from Gopalgaunge, a rural part of Bengal, at the Mainland China and the waiters at the Pizza Hut. The waiter at Crescent Moon and the Sea Shell, the Mathura the best Veg-Restaurant I’ve ever been, Babbal-Da-Dhaba, Prime Roaster at the Spencer’s Plaza, Wang’s Kitchen, Zing’s Kitchen and the Planet Yumm! All of them knew me well. Then this evening, I started eating again.

Was I feeling hurt? I don’t think so. I was still getting those old visions. What’s the difference? It’s just food and I, what’s the big deal? But the mood was not at all getting fixed. The feeling was quite disgusting. It was not hurting and it is not making me happy either. I tried loud music, soft music, I heard news, phew, and it’s really ridiculous. I remember one hard time at South City Mall; I didn’t have anyone to hold my seat and I had my hands full of lot of things but as you know nothing is imbalance in the universe, so I had a funny experience at CCD, when I was there, the waiter was not at all worried about me, he didn’t approached me until I called him after sitting on the couch for 30 minutes. That stupid waiter might be thinking that I was waiting for my gang or something.

“Hard” why she used this specific word? What kind of “Hardness”? So many questions rose at the same time. I got my order and started fisting on it. But today it wasn’t that natural. There were those words telling me, “Victor, it’s very hard, quit it.” So I stopped and took a sip of the drink I ordered. I spent lot of time analyzing the drink, it got nice colors and then I started chewing the cucumber slices which reminded me the sandwich I had earlier in the evening. I wasn’t alone. I started comparing the situations and then I stopped. I didn’t have any conclusion. But that word, they were ringing, but only without any sound, like vibrations. I hate vibrations, when I had my HCL interview, my phone kept vibrating for long time, later on I ringed back the number, it was of my dad’s, well he wanted to know that how many balls are there in billiards and even got angry because I did not picked the call on time.

I remember on one particular day when there was a Bank Strike and I was unaware of that, I didn’t have any cash but 4-5 ATMs near my house. It was a Saturday and I knew I don’t have to go office but to somewhere else where I could spend my time peacefully. So I woke up little late, took bath, got dressed and went out to uncover the truth that I had to stay empty stomach till 8 o’clock in the evening when the banking system got restored. Meanwhile, I had some chocolates that I always kept in the fridge. I recollected almost everything I was doing while eating all my life. I remembered many things and most of time I ate alone, there wasn’t anybody to accompany. I grew up, and I grew up well.

My food was trying to achieve room temperature, so I started eating again. I started thinking that is it going to get harder later on? I never believed in future it’s a myth. I was sensing a little rudeness from me for myself, with all the weird imaginations is what I was surrounded with, and I was not at all feeling like eating, but can’t leave that alone too, it was so tasty. I finished it soon, paid the bill and started off to home.

Those words took a shape already and kept popping up. I don’t know what I am going to do or how I’m going to react when I have to eat alone again. I feel like I’m standing on some kind of Argand Plane and trying to sort out the logic. But I could find none. It’s clear as water and at the same time it carried other features of water too. It has no color, smell or taste. Something like mirage, it was there but not really. I was trying hard to put an end to it but something inside me wants to go further but only without any destination. “Hard” is a mean word and it is hard-wired into my mind.

Yesterday I saw my mother crying. Tears kept falling from her eyes. She was shattered on the death of Late

***

I was only 3 years old but I clearly remember that my grandmother (mother of my mother) often cried by the bank of the pond and my uncle’s younger son always followed her and used to cry together. Well, his cry was justified as “He cries because she cries” but nobody knows why my grandma used to cry? One day she stopped eating and finally she died on a Wednesday. She was eighty-nine years old when she died. Maybe she was missing her husband. My momma cried, her sister too and many more but my Uncle did not. Here the confusion increased further. Momma always said that he was the closest one to her momma, so it should lead him to cry too, but the theory didn’t hold there. They say, when life is not happening anymore, get married. When my favorite sister got married in July 16, 2006 his husband cried when he was about to leave to his own house. He cried because everyone was crying. I can’t justify that, it makes me laugh. My momma told me that Dad cried too when he was in same kind of situation. My HSBC Regional Head once shared his story to me that he cried by looking at her wife when she delivered a son. I’m nowhere close to any kind of conclusion because I don’t understand why these men cried. They can’t be sad, they are not happy or injured or angry, but they cried and those tears cannot be basal or reflex and as you see that emotional part was already wiped out and no other options are left. There ain’t no onions nearby.

***

Could it be fear? Fear of losing? Yes, why not. Here I start putting my own theory, when someone dies, his or her near ones cry out quite loud. That could the fear of losing the treatment they use to get from the one who has gone. There is a variety of treatments, fatherly, motherly, brotherly, savior, amuser, lucrative, guardian and so on. Humans by nature love fear but they can hardly bear it and that’s why ejaculate prolactin, a lot of them. I believe that science has all the answers; precisely; the science has all that it created. I am not contradicting myself and not taking side of supernatural phenomenon. So, as I talk about tears, science would give me another weird substance called prolactin and everything about it but why and how is still lost somewhere. Cry could be a shock absorber in case of injuries and even in such case I can’t introspect myself. I can feel the itching sore of rashes but I don’t feel pain actually. I love the color of my blood, it mesmerizes me. It is getting confusing yet again. Maybe after you cry for long time, you’re not left with much energy to make even mild sound. I like to put an end on this endless propaganda. Eventually, I may have wrote about many reason for crying which are still confusing to me but without any doubt or confusion I want to tell you one solid reason that you should not cry is that it makes people think that you’re weak. So don’t cry and don’t give advantage.