Chaat the f*#@ up!!

I don't know how I do it but I find myself at the receiving end of bad service at restaurants more times than I wish. For those of you that don't know me personally, despite all the evidence to the contrary, I'm not a prick, a difficult patron or a bad tipper. OK, not on all days. Alright, definitely not last Sunday when the latest episode of my run in with an Indian restaurant happened. But in hindsight, this was something that was waiting to happen and that it happened didn't surprise me the least.

Chaat Paradise is a restaurant in Mountain View along the famous El Camino Real. Tucked away in a corner of a mall, they are purveyors of North Indian food. I have in the past taken my business to them on many occasions. The prime motivation in choosing them over half a dozen other places right along El Camino Real is that we live a short distance from their establishment. Take away this advantage and there is no reason why I wouldn't go elsewhere as one can hardly tell them apart inasmuch as taste, quality and service are concerned.

Cut to this past Sunday and we were driving back home from somewhere and decided to pick up some food for dinner en route. Since we would have to pass Chaat Paradise on our way, we decided to go there. I placed my order with the manager at the cash register - some rotis and a couple of run-of-the-mill curries that wouldn't require fancy culinary maneuvers. The wait time, I was informed, was 15 minutes - par for a Sunday evening dinner time. I went back to my car and was passing the time trying to convince my kid that he could go back home to his toys very soon.

The food was not ready in 15 minutes. The manager rummaged through the few take away bags on the table behind the counter, checked with the kitchen and asked me to wait for ten more minutes. I go back a few years with this place and this was playing to the usual script. On time food was never their strong point. Back to the car and convincing an agitated kid expressing his burning desire to be set free from the car seat.

Fifteen minutes later, the food was still not ready. The manager checked the new take away bags, checked with the kitchen and came up to the register.

"Sir, there are many phone orders ahead of you. So it is going to take some more time." This in Hindi. I know just enough Hindi to know that this asshole had messed something up.

"But you knew this when you said 15 minutes right?" I was holding myself back. This wasn't the first time this has happened to me here and my patience was paper thin.

"I was only giving you an idea." This only confirmed that not only had he messed up but was trying to act smart. When I'm hungry and trying in vain to pacify my kid holed up in a parked car, someone trying to pontificate his sorry ass out of a fuck up of his own making in Hindi doesn't help the situation one bit.

Three options presented themselves:

1. Punch him in the face and storm out of the place. After dealing with the aftermath of course.
2. Demand a refund, go to another restaurant and spend more time than what would have taken to fix a homemade dinner.
3. Play along, wait for the food and go back home.

All things considered, option 3 seemed to be the prudent one to pursue and I came back to the car with the assurance that the kitchen had dropped everything else to prepare my order in five minutes.

Five minutes later, and by now I had spent close to 45 minutes just waiting for my damned order, the food is still missing. I'm trying to get the attention of the manager who is busy on the phone. He did a quick kitchen check and asked for more time citing too many orders.

I lost my patience and asked for a refund figuring that I was better off going back home or trying some other place.

The bugger agreed to refund the money but instead of reaching for the register, picked up the phone, called someone and started talking while I was standing there.

"You ordered twenty rotis, right?" Hindi reared its head once again. And the idiot gave it away that he had no clue what I had ordered.

I repeated my order, this time barely concealing my frustration.

With the correct information, he sauntered up to the line of take away bags and quietly fished out mine from among the earlier ones: my food had been sitting there all along for the past 45 minutes. The entire time that I was made to wait, this filthy animal posing as a manager was feeding me false information, buying time for no reason without even the foggiest clue that my food was already done.

I was now in a flying rage and started shouting at him at the very top of my voice about why clowns belong only in the circus and shouldn't be running restaurants. The portly bastard, showing not even the faintest trace of remorse, even started accusing me of not clarifying something or the other to him soon enough or clear enough. In Hindi.

Hearing the commotion, one of his waiters appeared and used a swear word. May be he saw this as his only chance for a long overdue pay hike or he had illusions of becoming his son-in-law. Whatever be the case, I was forced to respond in kind. A heated and colorful exchange of pleasantries in English, Hindi and Tamil, which made a late but forceful entry to give vent to my rage, provided live multi-lingual entertainment to the crowd of diners tucking into their dishes. At some point during the melee, the bugger even threatened to call the cops. To which I offered him my phone and urged him to dial them right away which, of course, promptly quietened him. No man in his mind would want to be declared an idiot by the police force.

I got a full refund, vowed never to step foot into Chaat Paradise, advised the waiting customers to find a better restaurant and returned home. They were, of course, absolutely thankful. Not for the advice but because their wait time just came down.

As I had mentioned, this wasn't the first time that that guy had tried to be a smart ass. On multiple occasions in the past, it was always something or the other. Lousy service, missed orders, dirty utensils and I had taken them all in my stride. But that Sunday, I just let go. It was as if the sluice gates were thrown open and all the pent up frustration came gushing out.

In the eyes of those that were there that night, I was some random idiot pissing off a restaurant manager. But to me it was a cathartic exercise. And although my wife disagrees, I walked out of that damned place a free man. A free hungry man. 

Kumud Electronics - A Dirty Business

If you are of Indian origin and live in the San Francisco Bay area, chances are you have stepped into Kumud Electronics at least once. Given my addiction to Indian cuisine, we employ industrial blenders and grinding machines in our household to help churn out one perfect dish after the other. And machines being what they are, tend to break down and require an intervention of some sort. This is where Kumud electronics enter the picture.

For the benefit of the uninitiated, this is the "largest and oldest 110-220V electronics store" in the Bay Area, but let's cut to the chase. It is a cramped, over priced desi store that tries to sell everything under the sun (from carbon brushes to puja items) at an exorbitant mark up. And the icing on the cake is it is run by people that haven't yet heard about customer service. Doing business with them is the best way to appreciate the essence of anti-monopoly laws. 

Our Preethi mixer decided to strike sometime on September. And how! It was working fine one moment and our kitchen smelled like melting plastic the next. My entire engineering education flashed before my eyes and immediately prompted me to do the right thing: unplug it and rush it to Kumud electronics.

Trip 1: Mileage: 10 miles

The store bears more than a passing resemblance to that store from Pulp Fiction. And if that is not enough reason for you to keep away, two bald guys (for descriptive purposes only), that may or may not be brothers, are always behind the counter. They sport an expression that wouldn't seem out of place on the face of a person living through the consequences of a particularly bad burrito from the previous night. But since they seem to be the one store in this region that may carry items that you will need to keep those kitchen gadgets from the old country running, they are still in business, raking in the hard earned dollars of the desi diaspora.

We stepped in and laid the ailing mixer on the counter, walking them through the symptoms. He fired it up and sure enough a plastic smell swept over the place. Just as we were beginning to asphyxiate, he turned it off and turned towards me.

"Hmmm...brush ees gone" He carefully chose his words to explain the gravity of the situation.

"Really? But why is there a plastic smell?" I shot back with the confidence of a vague understanding from many years back that the motor brush isn't exactly made of plastic.

"Yeh toh...." he cleared his throat and proceeded to give me a lecture on the principles of electromagnetism, occasionally throwing in a "daalar". In chaste Hindi. The assumption of my Hindi quotient was more annoying than an impromptu lecture aimed at milking money.

My inner mind started sending me unwanted text messages: Remember that Hindi teacher who looked like T. N Seshan having a bad day? You should have paid attention. Or remember Electrical Machines from 4th semester? Guess what? You should have paid attention. At least once in a while.

"Iyere, ennavaam Saettukku?" I turned to my wife and inquired, much like the Hindi challenged Velu Nayakar would ask his consigliere, Delhi Ganesh. (Yes, in my eyes, Nayagan was a poor attempt to make an Indian Godfather. You knew that too, didn't you?)

"Brush poidthungaraan...pudhu brush velai $10, adha maatha labor $40 aahumaam" my wife sprang to my rescue with a swiftness honed by the many Hindi movies (two and a half movies, to be exact) we've watched together. The pleasures of being married to a multi-linguist!

Since I had paid less than $100 for the new mixer purchased less than a year back, I quickly decided to buy only the brush and try to fix it myself. Although my wife, who has an intimate understanding of my engineering abilities, wanted to protest, she decided to hold back and we left the store with a carbon brush, which, I must admit, I was seeing for the first time ever.

Once home, I opened up the mixie with the air of an experienced electrician (again, for the first time ever) and the problem was immediately obvious even to my untrained eyes: the Kumud store guy doesn't have a good nose for electrical faults. The switch, which has a plastic casing, was severely burnt and need to be replaced. The brush, wherever it was located within the depths of the mixer, was doing just fine. I carefully unplugged the wires from the terminals, marked the sequence with a pen and turned up again at Kumud with the carbon brush.

Trip 2: Mileage: 20 miles

I explained to him about his wrong diagnosis and how it is the switch that needs replacement rather than the brush. He didn't flinch a bit or show any sign of guilt. Instead, he offered me a replacement switch that cost $25. Bear in mind that $40 gets you a brand new, low end mixer at Walmart. Left with no choice, I returned the brush, paid the additional $15 and this time went home with a new switch of questionable credentials: although it was of the same type, it  looked and felt cheap and was a dirty black color. Well whatever floats the boat.

It wasn't until a couple of weeks later that my wife's pushing and prodding finally prompted me to sit down and try to replace the switch. My 18-month old son assumed the role of an electrician's helper by depositing his toy car into the mixer's cavity and slipping away with the screw driver. After shutting myself up in a room, I tried to mount the one purchased from Kumud. As it turned out, it was either meant for a different brand/type or was a poorly made duplicate. It was slightly larger than the original and hence wouldn't fit into the housing at all. Super! 

I drove back a third time to their store fully prepared for a confrontation. One of the bald brothers heard me out and displayed no sign of remorse, guilt or anything of that sort.

Trip 3: Mileage: 30 miles

Me: This is the wrong switch!
Bald Bro1: I know...
Me: You knew?? Then you should have told me when you sold me this.
BB1: Ai will phit it.
Me: But I'm telling you I just tried that. Won't fit. I want the original switch.
BB1: No original sweetch.
Me: No original, no fit.
BB1: I know...I masheen mixie to phit the sweetch. Labor only thurty phive dolars.

I stormed out of the store, vowing not to let him, his brother or their crew lay their dirty hands on my mixer. I requested a colleague of mine traveling to India to get me an original switch. Despite his extremely packed schedule (he was getting engaged!), he found time to accommodate my request and last week I had a brand new, original switch flown in straight from Chennai. Total cost: Rs 61 (approx US$ 1.10) I immediately tried this one and it fit perfectly! I connected the leads, plugged it in and gingerly fired it up.

Whirrrrrrrrrrrrr!

I tell you, the noise of the running motor to my ears was like the crisp notes from a symphony. Images of arachu vitta sambhar, thogayals, chutneys and curries seasoned with grated coconut, floated by. But there were still miles to go before I could eat. I took the f***-ed up switch back to Kumud for a full refund.

Trip 4: Mileage: 40 miles

This time, Bald Brother 2 received me and sought full details of the case going all the way back to September. When I finally demanded my cash back, he pointed his crooked finger to a paper stuck on the top rack of the shelf behind the counter: No refund. Only store credit. Dirty a****les!! No amount of reasoning could make him sway from his store policy. So I had to accept a hand scribbled note saying that I can buy anything from the store for $25 by March 2013.

I plan not to patronize this dirty business in future except to get something overpriced for the $25 store credit. They seem to be running the store on the spider web model: squeeze anyone that strays in to the maximum extent possible. Pleasant customer service, valuing your business and nurturing customer loyalty seem to be abstract topics as far as these guys are concerned.