There are a lot of things about Turkmen restaurants that Americans find frustrating. One of them is that often, things will be listed on the menu that aren’t really available. At this particular restaurant I would say about 30-40% of what’s on the menu is never available and on this particular day, none of the chicken dishes was on offer, as Lindsay discovered.
Another thing to watch out for is the bread basket. Since Turkmen are so fond of bread, a bread basket is brought to the table every time, but it’s not free. At most restaurants it’s a manat. (Remember this) So if you know you don’t want bread you have to quickly say you don’t need it so the waitress will take it back without charging you. Oftentimes, we forget but it’s not a huge deal because it’s only a manat.
We ordered and ate our food and when the check came we discovered that they charge 3 manat for the bread and many errors. Things were priced higher than the menu said. One of the things, Amy’s salad, the waitress admitted and changed. Two other things were my omelet and Amy’s eggs. My omelet was listed as 4 manat. But the waitress said it was more because there was cheese. But the menu didn’t say that. This is how the menu read “Omelet with cheese/tomatoes/sausage…4 manat.” That is all it said, so I thought I would be getting a cheese, tomato, sausage omelet for 4 manat and when it didn’t have tomatoes and sausage I assumed it was because they were out of those ingredients (another typical thing to watch out for in restaurants here). There was no place that listed the higher price if you wanted things added to your omelet. Amy’s eggs were listed as 2 manat. But we were charged 5 manat. The waitress said it’s 2 manat per egg and you got two eggs. (Amy was served two eggs, she didn’t request two eggs, she just pointed to the menu item.) First of all, the menu doesn’t say 2 manat per egg and second of all, as all you math whizzes have concluded, if it’s 2 manat per egg and you ate 2 eggs, the charge should be 4 manat, not 5. And there was something on the bill for 1.60 which I think was for the condiments that were already sitting on our table when we arrived.
This brings us to another thing that frustrates us. Quite often it is Russians who are working in these places and they don’t speak Turkmen. So since none of us knew more than a handful of words in Russian, we couldn’t effectively argue with her about the bill. Though with our Turkmen and few Russian words and pointing to the menu she should have known what we were saying and probably did, but she was just a bitch as most people in the service industry are here. We grudgingly paid our bill and left, vowing never to come back and discussed how what this country desperately needs is lessons on customer service (and math). I said I was afraid to go back to America for winter break because I might not want to leave. Amy, who was in the States a month or two ago for a wedding said, “Oh, it’s like a magical fairyland. People are nice.”
Our patronage at certain places is based on customer service because that’s what we’re trained to do in the States. We have a neighborhood dukon where the people who work there are really friendly and patient with our Turkmen. There’s another dukon on our block that Lindsay warned me about, calling it the “bitchy lady dukon.” There if she requests “bir liter Coca-Cola” the lady asks in a snotty tone, “what?” as though she can’t understand Lindsay. As Lindsay points out, our Turkmen may not be fantastic, but we’re not getting “a liter of Coke” wrong. I once stopped at a new dukon and waited for a couple minutes before anyone showed up to wait on me. It turned out the girl was hidden from view because she was sitting behind the counter watching TV. When she finally stood up she snapped “what?” at me. Goodness, I’m so sorry to interrupt your TV time at work.
The people at our friendly neighborhood dukon are smart. I buy something there every day and make a point of buying everything that I can there, only getting the things they don’t have at my supermarket. But unfortunately, the principles of capitalism haven’t largely caught on here. Many dukons are disheveled, with layers of dust on some products. Keeping stores well stocked is not a priority. Often I’ll find something I like at a supermarket and when they run out of it, it can be a few weeks before they get more in. Sometimes if they don’t have the right change, they’ll just give you something to make up the difference. A couple times I’ve been given a box of matches in lieu of 10 tenne and once Lindsay was given a stick of gum. At the airline office, Lindsay bought a 41 manat ticket and gave the lady two twenties and a ten. The lady didn’t have change so she just gave Lindsay the ten back, which if you do that enough causes quite a loss for the airlines. Not that such an occurrence bothers us, but it is bad business practice.
And I’ve mentioned before that the concept of a line eludes people here. Sometimes at the supermarket, someone with a few loaves of bread will line jump. Usually I prevent this by positioning my body so they can’t. Once, the lady at the supermarket ignored a line jumper and waited on me which is one reason why I still shop there when I don’t go to my dukon, because many places, line jumpers get away with it. Sometimes if someone cuts I just silently fume and shake my head. But sometimes I’m feeling feisty. This month when I went to the bank, which is an interesting process in itself, someone line jumped me. Here’s how the bank works. I go to one woman who fills out a slip that I sign. Then I walk down the hall to a second woman who initials the slip. (This is where the line jump happened. And I gave him the death stare.) Then I go to a third woman across the hall to get my money. The line jumper was there waiting behind the guy I should have been behind. So I stood uncomfortably near him, my arm grazing his. He kept moving away and I kept moving toward him until he said to me “you go ahead.” This, my students, is the power of “presence;” I didn’t say a word to him, but he knew he better let me go next.