We recently wrote about bad service at Glasse. Now we’d like to write about good service at Marine Drive’s Arabian Knights. Arabian Knights is generally cool, we went there when they first opened and the Syrian chef gave us a heart-shaped falafel.
Most places, however, are nice when they open (and the owner is around). It’s harder to maintain good service day in, day out.
This time we pulled over to park when someone came out with a menu, smiling, and said we could just order from the car. He was nice, helpful, and hung around without just staring at us. This may seem normal, but in Sri Lanka you can’t take basic service courtesy for granted.
But that’s not what we’re writing about here. As he brought out the order, Suresh (we found out his name later) checked whether the two identical looking shawarmas were labeled (so we could tell them apart). Noticing that they weren’t, he went back inside to label them.
It’s a little thing and ultimately not necessary, but it just shows that he was putting himself in the customers shoes and thinking of things from our perspective, not just moving a bag from point A to point B.
Besides giving him a good tip, we’ve contacted Arabian Knights via Twitter (which we think the owners check). All we know is that his name is Suresh, but we just wanted to say that good deeds don’t go unnoticed.
As much as highlighting bad service can hopefully change the service culture around Sri Lanka, we think that giving props to the good will help as well. If you have any good (or bad) service experiences email us at indi@yamu.lk or tweet at us or something (@yamulk). We’ll set up something more structured soon.
