Just another piece of my experience in Saudi Arabia…As most of the people aware, shopping and eating out in restaurants are the best part of your life in Saudi Arabia….especially in Riyadh. Unfortunately, if you happen to be stayed in Riyadh as “bachelor”, then you are in trouble. Don’t try to visit any shopping malls during weekends. They don’t need your business even you are having two.. three credit cards and lot of money in your wallet, it will not make any difference. You can expect a “STOP” signal without any mercy from the security guard despite your age or good intention to just shopping. It is very difficult to think about such experience as you feel that you never have been humiliated before like this as the security guards face expression looks like they are handling the most notorious criminals in the city. It seems to be they are trying to prevent trouble making Saudi juveniles. However, it is not easy to stop them as they know how to enter these shopping malls whatever the restriction over there. This entry restriction will affect only the expatriates those normally don’t dare to do any wrongdoing in shopping malls. 

Living abroad is one of the great experiences in life…you can see different things…sometime our expatriate communities are handling the citizens or expatriates in very bad way too. As my office is located in the computer market of Riyadh, I am spending sometime over the computer shops and you can see many surprising customer CARE over there. There is one showroom very often I visit, most of the time you can see the workers over there hanging over the telephone or browsing internet and if there is any customer enter the shop they simply ignore and continue their telephone conversation or browsing. Any queries from the customer, they avoid looking at their eyes and the attention will be away from the customer. This might not be affecting their business as they are having service contracts with companies. But whatever the case, I think we should treat the customer very well and at least talk to them politely. If you don’t want their business, make any valuable excuses…but don’t ignore them.

Whenever I am seeing this continuous hanging on telephone calls, the following joke is coming to my mind…..

A young businessman had just started his own firm. He’d rented a beautiful office and had it furnished very well. Sitting there, he saw a man come into the outer office. Wishing to appear busy, the young businessman picked up the phone and started to pretend he had a big deal working.

He threw huge figures around and made giant commitments. Finally, he hung up and asked the visitor, “Can I help you?”.

The man said, “Sure, I’ve come to install the phone!”