Today on the way to my one-on-one tutoring session, I wanted a bottle of water, so before going into the office where I tutor, I stopped at the coffee shop below it, thinking it’s a coffee shop, surely they have water. But it turned out I was wrong. I asked for water, and the gentleman got up, walked out, and returned a minute or two later with a bottle of water from a store a yard or two down. I could have done that, of course! Wouldn’t it have been easier to tell me to go a couple of doors down? Not that I would have understood that if it were said in Turkish, of course...
The reason this falls into the untold category, since it only happened today, is that this isn’t the first time something like this has happened. Once, we were at a little restaurant, which claimed to be an Italian restaurant, but, as we found out, didn’t have a chef. They only had pizza and drinks available - although I use the term loosely. Because when we all ordered pizzas, one of the workers walked across the street to the market, bought the ingredients, and a full hour later we finally had our pizzas. The wait was long enough that one of our number left.
So why do these kinds of things happen? Well, it’s a hospitality culture. There’s an obligation to accomodate, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The problem comes in when it’s applied and when it isn’t. My employer has accommodated me in many ways - gave me housing, helped me out quite a bit in my first few days. But there have still been lots of problems, lots of ways in which they have been most unaccommodating, some of which I’ve mentioned before. So this accommodation culture that demands a shopkeeper must serve you tea while you survey his wares can seem to be selectively applied.
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