Welcome to Malaysia

DEC 30 — It was an omen which I should have heeded before I left for Krabi a few weekends back. And Krabi will forever be etched in my mind as a 12-hour holiday, filled with environmental and emotional turbulence. This week’s essay is not about Krabi however (that would be more suited for a Bridget Jones's Diary type of novel).

I had entered the Pusrawi shop in AirAsia’s LCCT to get a bottle of mineral water. Surprisingly, there was none on display, save for soft drinks. So I asked the three workers at the cashier’s who were busy gossiping whether there was any in stock and in the store.

The sole young man, amid his miniscule harem, shook his head and waved me away.

I asked again: “Dik, ada tak jual mineral water?”

Frowning at me before turning to his adoring audience, he snapped: “Eesh, China ni pekak ke. Aku dah cakap tak de, tak faham-faham ke?”

One good thing about looking the way I do is that I am never thought of as a Malay and everyone else thinks I don’t understand Malay, and that I’m deaf, so I know what people say about the Chinese. However, when other Malays realise I’m one of them, they’re instantly friendlier. And sometimes I get a discount when I buy pisang goreng. (Sometimes looking so Jepun works to my benefit; a taxi driver gave me a free ride about KL showing off his city while I just said, 'Hait! Hait! Arigato!' at the back.)

You’ve heard of that one, haven’t you?

Depending on the vendor, if you’re XYZ race, the price of pisang goreng kat tepi Jalan ABC fluctuates. If you are an expat or Chinese, you’ll be paying this much, but if you’re Malay, it’s that much. If you’re Indian, and since Indians are similar to the Malays in their sensibilities, they get a similar rate. Something like the Bumi discount Bumis get when they buy property.

I remember our Ustaz Arifin bemoaning this unethical practice at an usrah once: if you’re Muslim, an honest one at that, and if you’re not Muslim but honest, you would not charge pisang goreng the way some of these sellers do. It's wrong. There should be a flat rate for pisang goreng. After all, stomachs have no colour, yes?

Back to my mineral water adventure.

I left the shop in a huff, and after a while simmered down enough to think, that if I were to write about this incident, would it have be about race, or about the poor service we customers get? For surely, good service transcends race? Or that in Malaysia, everything IS about race?

Of course, this does not happen everywhere in Malaysia. Where my parents live, politeness reigns. You’re talking about a semi-rural area with a good multi-cultural make-up. My father became acquainted with the mechanics around the area, who range from Indonesians to Malaysians, who always have a smile on their faces, and are soft-spoken, unlike the cutthroat mechanics he met in the city.

“Good service can be had if you put your mind to it and if the boss instils it,” he said, citing another example of exemplary service, Citibank. It’s nothing to do with race. A good number of the frontliners are Malays but they are efficient and polite. So it has nothing to do with being a lazy Melayu.

Unfortunately, bad service generally is something we have come to take for granted. And one cannot say expatriates have it better — it all depends on your wallet. If you’re the expatriate with a huge bank account, yes, you will be worshipped but what of the normal, average Mat Salleh?

Sensitisation workshops can be held, but perhaps only at corporate and government levels, but what about the mom-and-pop businesses? Will they invest in etiquette or focus on the profit margin? And honestly, is it so difficult to be nice and honest? Or is this part of a BTN campaign?

Friends tell me that what we have to endure is nothing compared to what migrant workers and non-white working class foreigners face when they need to be attended to by salespersons and frontliners. So tell me, is this just plain bad service we have come to live with, or is this racism?