Usually, on Sundays we get breakfast and dinner from outside instead of preparing at home. We know a nice place from where we usually get the breakfast, but yesterday we wanted to try some new place. After searching around for 30 minutes we finally found a new tiffin center.
I went to the shop and asked the person sitting at cash counter what I want, and she repeated my order loudly to the people preparing the food.
The moment I entered into the shop and taking a glance at the people, I understood that it’s a newly opened shop and this business is new to most of the people working there. If you wonder how do I know, my parents ran a small hotel for almost 16+ years and I know a thing or two about running a hotel.
So, I sat there watching those people preparing my order.
- One person, around 45+ age, seems to be the most experienced person among them and leading the efforts. He is asking someone where is something while it should already be at the table, telling someone else to bring more oil packets, shouting at somebody else for messing up something and finally went on doing it by himself.
- Another lady, around 35+ age, is doing her work slooooowly as if she has all the time in the world. No matter how much others tell her to do it quickly, she is on the same pace. In between she is murmuring something (I guess she is scolding the leading dude) expressing her disappointment about something. Looking at the way she is maintaining her cool and slow pace, I guess she is not completely new this profession, but seems like an experienced and highly demotivated employee.
- Then there are a couple of young boys who are actively working on packing the items. Among them one is super active, he is literally running around and doing the job as fast as he can. The other boy seems to have a great sense of humour. Even though their senior is passing orders aggressively at them, he is maintaining his cool, doing his work, and occasionally cracking jokes at his senior making him laugh too. These are two joyful juniors enjoying their work.
- And, then there was one dude sitting in a corner, pealing the onions, minding his own job, not interfering in others work at all. No matter what, he continues doing his own work only. There was a water pipe filling in a bucket, and it’s overflowing. Still, he didn’t care. Looks like he has a strong and well-defined contract on what he will do.
- Remember the lady who was sitting at cash counter? Now she is making rounds and telling everyone to speed up and smiling at customers for no reason. Overall, she is looking so confident that she is managing it very well.
Looking at all this, as a software developer, I don’t feel anything new here. I was like:
I am too familiar with this. I see this day-in and day-out. It’s just a different domain but behavioural patterns are exactly same.
While I was enjoying observing all this, I also got impatient because of the delay. I am a software engineer, and in our world everything needs to be served within 3 seconds, otherwise we will move on to next one.
Usually at a tiffin center with experienced staff it won’t take more than 10 to 15 minutes to serve the order. But, these folks seems to be new in this business and I can understand it will get delayed…but it took almost 40 minutes.
Finally, I paid the bill and took my ordered items and while leaving I thought to myself “Most likely I may not come here again because they are taking so much time”.
After going home, we finally had our breakfast and everyone really liked the taste of the food. Especially the tomato chutney feels like Homemade and super yummy.
This morning my 2-and-half-year old son is asking for pato (tomato in his language) chutney. Guess who went to the same tiffin center again :-)