Value of Service

   India truly knows how to do service well.  While I might cynically say that they often do it by putting as many cheap employees on the payroll as possible, I think that it is a good thing that in restaurants that may have only us as customers in a 2 hour timespan would have at least 8 employees...they are all trying to make a good living.  Maybe because the jobs that deal with tourists are high paying or maybe because India knows what customer service is, everyone tries their very hardest to do a super job in all of their dealings with us.  For example, our car drivers always get out to open our doors and one guide even tried to put the seats in an auditorium that automatically folded back up down for us unsuccessfully.  Those porters waited two hours to carry our bags.  If we showed any sign of displeasure at anything, there was always a manager present to ask us what was wrong.  They don't seem to do anything about it if for example our food tasted bad, but they are genuinely concerned.  When our sheets were dirty in the room, a man with a tie from the front desk and the maid came to fix it.  To top off everything, Michelle lost her trousers in Africa and we needed to get some pants.  In the middle of the street in a market, we saw a display of sweat pants each for $1.50.  We purchased a pair but it was too long.  The man at the stand told us that he would hem them if we bought them.  He took our pants, ran around the corner and in 5 minutes had them hemmed to her length for no extra money.  Talk about service!


Here is a man cutting gemstones:

This is a picture of a man testing the quality of a rug with a torch.  If someone used anything that wasn't silk to weave it (in their homes, which is the normal place of rug making), the rug would go up in flames!