An Indigo cabin crew called a servant and a waiter got beaten up for serving food late. Why do Indians treat service staff so poorly?
I have been wanting to write about this topic for a while now and have come across so much content on the same off late. The latest of these was the cringe behaviour of an entitled uncle with the cabin crew in an Indigo flight between Istanbul and Delhi. Click on the link to see the short video.
The hostess does not take any more shit from the uncle and tell him multiple times that she is not his servant after he mentions this. The fact that the uncle treated her like a “servant” is not just an insult to her but also shows how we think of servants as second class citizens.
Do you remember the iconic scene from the iconic movie Rangeela where Aamir Khan (who is a tapoori) goes to an upscale restaurant with Urmila? While he didnt beat up any waiter and was more out of place than anything else, he was still quite crass with the patient waiter - an embodiment of how we all treat waiters.
Beyond such incidents, I have come across people I know who try to get the attention of a waiter by snapping their fingers or by shouting “abe waiter”.
As I mentioned in one of my recent blogs (Stories and reflections from my travels abroad -Part 1), in my travels abroad, I was very pleasantly surprised how courteous people are towards restaurant staff, tourism staff and even a stranger passing by. They were treated as equals rather than second class citizens whose place is society is to abide by the rich master’s asks. In fact, unlike the unfortunate service class in India, the tone of the service class themselves in the UK/Europe does not have the tone of servitude. The caretakers of various tourist attraction also treat their job and their own place in society with higher regard than the (generally) bored souls in India.
My experience at Bombay Canteen, Mumbai
Back in 2017, I had gone to the Bombay Canteen, an upscale new age fusion restaurant in Lower Parel in Mumbai with a few guys. After a drink each and a dish, we clearly felt that the place was not quite what we were looking for (i.e. -a pub like experience) and we decided to leave. Now, throughout the conversation, the server/waiter (who was wearing t shirt and jeans) treated us pretty casually like how your colleague would treat you. A part of my appreciated his straightforward tone but another part of me was a little irritated with this and thought he was being partronizing with us because we chose to leave very early (or maybe we were a bunch of guys).
Fast forward 2022, I listened to a podcast by the founders of Bombay Canteen with Amit Verma which I would definitely recommend anyone to understand how the restaurant business works in India. One clear takeaway was on how the founders (who were trained and honed in New York) made it a point to drive that confidence in their employees to treat guests as equals and take no shit from them. They also didnt “indulge” weird requests from guests such as making a dish which was not on the menu. This was clearly something that they must have picked up in their days in the US. Now, to me, the incident in 2017 made far more sense. While I am still a little peeved by the borderline lack of courtesy that the server had, I can make sense of his behaviour a little more.
Indians and servants/maids/cleaners
I recently read a book by Pallavi Aiyar called “Smoke and Mirrors” which was about her experience in living in China for 5 years between 2002 and 2007. This book gave a range of much needed perspective on how the Chinese society and systems work and also contrasts it with the same in India.
One key point that she mentions is on how even toilet cleaners and maids are treated with major respect in China. In fact, one of her students (proper “middle class”) asked her if she could hire his mother as a maid if there was any such vacancy. Can you imagine the same in India? Never.
Another incident she mentions (shown below) was how someone preferred being a toiler cleaner fairly which honorable in society - far better than the back breaking labour work in the farms.
So why do Indians treat the service class so poorly?
A lot of this has to do with the hierarchical society that has been in place in India for thousands of years. The shudras or servant class and untouchability are deeply ingrained in the psyche of the Indian society. One of the few good things that the communist revolution did in China was to make society flatter - a key step towards making labour and service class jobs more respectful
Indian service class is poorly paid - its no wonder that so many of them prefer emigrating abroad to the middle east or any other country - where they may be in alone in a foreign land away from home - but at least get a dignified pay and better respect. This can be in restaurants, cruise ships, airports, supemarkets, hotels etc. I could certainly sense this in my trip to the UK recently where I came across hundreds of South Asians in service class jobs.
Indians are entitled -especially the average pampered male. They expect special treatment and expect people do their biding just because they are paying some money. Read this article by Vir Sanghvi on why Indians are rude to service staff for some perspective
As an extention of point 1, Indians have a very subscious bias of how each job is - an engineer/doctor or some MBA type job is treated with respect whereas a musician or a cabin crew is treated as a tier lower. This also extends to how society looks at someone who aspires to be a sportsperson/athlete (beyond Cricket). I recall this incident on how someone I know, one being asked where he works said that he worked asan artist to which he got a look of pity and said “Oh you didnt get a job in TCS/Infosys aah”.
I see some very small green shoots in how this is changing in India but there is a very long way to go - society does not change overnight. Lets start with changing ourselves and our loved ones first.
Hey Pratik! Thanks for penning down another hard hitting reality of Indian society! It was a treat to read as always! -Shipra