I woke up this morning and did not feel like eating cereal/musli. So I went out the Marketplace and got an ostrich burger and a mocha (pronounced mod-ka). The burger was amazing. They have this caramelized onion sauce that is also delicious as well. This whole experience made me feel like a local. The marketplace is actually a tourist attraction, full of souvenir things. But instead of waitinig until 1pm and wait in long lines to get the burger and coffee like everyone else, I went at 11am and got fresh burger and coffee with absolutely no lines. By the way, these two items cost nearly $8. Well, can't get an ostrich burger anywhere I guess.
I want to write an entry titled "It's the little things" in which I would tell my audience about all the little cultural differences that make studying/working/living aboard such a rich experience. But that would take a lot of work so I'll just write a paragraph or two whenever I realize something. Maybe I'll compile it later for an entry on the MIT blog.
So yesterday, I was watching Yahoo! news, New York edition, about the Starbucks closing its doors for 3 hours nationwide to retrain their people. I had already read about this earlier but watched it nevertheless. In the boardcast, one of the hosts said he's a regular customer and the only thing he ever orders is a ice latte with light ice. But the part that attracted my attention was that he said he refuses to call it a "tall" because it actually is a "small." See that cup of coffee to the left that I got this morning? That's a regular. I should really put a penny or something next to it but it's pretty small. It's like an extra-small cup of coffee in the US if they have something called extra-small. Kids sized. And it probably costed me more than getting a Verde coffee at Starbucks in the US.
So Starbucks closed its doors for 3 hours to reteach its people how to make espressos, steam milk, and how to give better customer service. But the only thing that the news boardcast people talked about was "I'm glad they're retraining their people because the service is terrible." Nothing about the coffee itself. Just complaints about the service. Customer service is a huge part of American culture. It's very important to Americans. I didn't realize this until I went to Germany this summer. People elsewhere do not value good customer service. They do not expect it or want it. Living aboard is actually not learning about other cultures as it is about learning about your own culture. Culture = the way we do things here = the things that we value.
1 comment:
yeah that must be interesting. ostrich? hehe...i rmr i had horse meat on my pizza in Berlin and everyone wanted to try a bit. (man, Sigrid let us have our own pizza, and we were SO stuffed...can you imagine me eating a large pizza by myself?)
Is mocha just pronounced differently from here?
Yeah, but we pay for our service too. It's actually kind of weird that Starbuck's service is so bad over there because the whole principle that Starbucks is built upon is that it has good service, and it's a higher quality place to go to than Dunkin Donuts. People go there for the atmosphere, and to study. But sometimes I wish I didn't have all the frills...I really don't care that much for waiters and I don't want to talk to them, I just want them to bring my food. I wish America has hostels, because paying almost $100 for a one night stay in the nowhere of New Hampshire is dumb, especially when you get there at 12pm and you have to check out at 11am.
Post a Comment