Customer Service

Coming from the west, we are bred to have an overly-developed sense of service and quality. This can be one of the main contributors to the fact that outside of our borders Americans can be perceived as demanding, boorish, uncultured oafs. Sure, the French are snobs, Germans androids, Dutch druggies and Brits drunkards, but those are all in their own way, sort of endearing. Our customarily accepted belief that the customer is always right and we pay only when we are satisfied is not quite held to the same gold standard throughout the rest of the world, Togo standing apart as a brilliantly blazing bastion of ever-augmenting apathy in the wide world of falling standards. This holds true regardless of the type of service rendered – if you enter someone’s establishment, your money instantly becomes their money. Lets see some examples –

Taxis – It is of absolutely no use asking if a driver actually knows the location of your destination. He will lie through his teeth to make sure that you get into his taxi, and then once he drives around for 20 minutes he will be forced into the position of having to ask other taxi drivers for directions, who, a priori, will lie to your driver. You will eventually arrive after an obscene amount of time and wrong stops, where forthwith the driver will demand through equal levels of wild gesticulation and banal excuses that you should pay him more than you agreed upon, because, mon frere, gas is expensive.

General services – Someone wash your clothes for you but rip holes in three of your shirts? C’est l’Afrique, monsieur. Fix your shoes and now they are more uncomfortable than before? C’est bien fait! Buy absolutely anything at the marché and have it break a few hours later? Du bon qualité. Anyone remember Coiffure Wait-and-See? A hair-cut this incredible doesn’t have to only be a one-time occurrence! Simply ask any street barber if they have ever cut white-hair before – if they swear on their mother’s grave that they have, you can be absolutely assured that you will receive an as-of-yet un-fathomable act of styling prestidigitation, destined to win you fame with your friends and rejection from the opposite sex! That’ll be 200CFA, monsieur.

There was a monetary exchange involved with this

Restaurants – This one goes without mentioning. Let’s not forget the Brochette Fiasco of Fall ’08. Now that was way back and my French was still a bit shaky, so I simply chalked it up to yovo-error on my part. However, well into my 2nd year here, I am now convinced beyond any reconciliation that the majority of servers who wait on you here are either idiots or just incredibly malicious, paying the white man back for colonization, one eff-ed up order at a time. Honestly, all the evidence I’ve seen points strongly to the short-bus hypothesis. Take, for example, the countless number of times I’ve been to the local cafeteria across the street from my house. I order the exact same thing every time – an egg sandwich with two eggs, mayonnaise, onions, and tomatoes. That’s 4 ingredients for anyone not following too closely – I swear on my life it is NEVER right. N-E-V-E-R. It’s especially tiring when I’m there alone and they bring me 2 sandwiches with one egg a piece. Or, my personal favorite - me, Steven, and Rayan ordering coffee at a nice-ish restaurant here. We asked the waitress if the coffee was filtered or instant – to which she assured us it was real, filtered coffee and then went on to tell us about how she makes it fresh every morning and that she herself won’t even touch the instant stuff. Satisfied, we ordered three cups. You want to take a guess at what she brought out 10 minutes later?

3 CUPS OF TEA.

I couldn't make this stuff up...


So, this leads me back to dinner two nights ago with friends Joe and Bree who were about to leave for a nice European vacation. We went to one of the nicer restaurants in Lomé, where we ordered a steak and 2 pork chops and were promptly served 3 steaks. When we sent it back (which was an absolute first for me here, by the way), instead of actually making the order right, they decided to tell us that, no, we were wrong, the blood-red flanks of charred cow in front of us were, actually, pork chops. Silly yovos….

The bastards tried to call security on us when we left without paying. Thankfully the owner arrived right as we were getting heated. What did he say? A man who’s been in the restaurant business for over 15 years and is used to the idea of customer service? And I quote - “Pork chops shouldn’t look like that.” We took the bottle of wine with us.

Yeah, whatever...