I daily return from my office at around half past six, and the moment I put my feet inside the room my stomach starts banging me to feed it. I have this routine to go out and have some snacks and a cup of tea (a bachelor has to go out and feed himself :( anything of his own wish :) lucky me). Last week I and my roommate decided to try a new place to have evening snacks and you may not believe it we went to a nearby Hospital canteen, it might look weird but I have always found hospital canteen as nice and clean, it doesn't mean that I keep going to hospitals I mean canteens in hospitals but yeah once or twice is ok as they also serve fine food for normal people. So we went there and ordered a cheese sandwich and two cups of tea. Sandwich was fine and to our surprise tea was served in a very large cup. We were expecting a tea in a cup similar to the nearby stalls in that area because all of the near-by business competitors or tea-makers follow same norms and even rates are increased at same time. We thought it might be one or two rupees more and asked for the final amount to be paid and again to our surprise it was the same price as six rupees. We did not ask him anything, paid the amount and started walking towards our place.
“He charged same as the other ones but the cup size was bigger than anybody else here” My friend started the discussion. I was also thinking about the same topic about the difference in this shop and our frequent visited shops.
“Yeah I noticed that and did you see tea was actually better, I liked it.”
“Yeah me too, and even there were tulsi leaf and black pepper were also there as catalyst”
“You are right”
We crossed the busy road and remained silent for a while as how could we know the reason behind this, and no customer would ask reasons for low profit making to a shopkeeper.
“Did you see that the tea-maker was like an employee???He was not the owner of the shop”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Did you see he was not concerned about the liking of his customer or how many customer were there; he was merely concerned about one thing to serve the customer as per the order and as per the instructions given to him. It seemed what I believe that he was concerned about the salary that he would receive at the end of the month. He did not give a damn how many customers visit the shop and whether the shop is making profits???His job must be restricted to giving daily sales to the owner and that must be all”
“May be you are right, but how does it relate to customers getting a better tea in big cups”
“It could have been like a shop owner started the canteen and hired a person to look after it. He did not take care about his competitors. The hired employee took concern only about his fixed salary irrespective of the profits of the shop. Now this is by chance that the hired employee makes a good tea and also adds extra ingredients. If he would have not been good in making a tea even then the shop would have continued to serve the same tea with whatsoever profits”
My friend looking agreed to the justification said, “You are right but do you think this will continue for a long time”
“I also can’t say anything about it, as it entirely depends on owner’s business interest. May be the canteen is his secondary or tertiary business and actual earning business could be something else”
My friend taking a pause then finally said, “This strikes me another thought that all the big shops around us in malls have the employees sitting and managing the shop and not the owner”
“I can guess where you are going to…..”
He continued, “That is why sometimes those shopkeepers don’t give a damn whether we buy their product or not and do not even try to convince us”
My friend was right and I also agree to this fact that an employee sometimes does not give a damn about the owners profit or loss. In some of these cases even a customer voicing his opinion would not get any consideration and would remain dissatisfied with the shop. This could even become more problematic when a customer is forced to buy a product from that one shop only as the product could be unavailable anywhere nearby.
Looking at the future of India, it seems that a day would come when there would be no small shops but only malls with an employee managing the same. Then the customer satisfaction would only depend upon the employee’s integrity in that shop. One could imagine the satisfaction that a customer would get in the coming time.
I can just hope that I being a customer would visit the shops where I would get full value, if not extra, of my hard-earned money. Image Source: Google
