Wednesday, May 03, 2006

back

it has been a while since i wrote anything due to work and life.. but here i am. i don't talk about what everybody talks about these days... not cos i don't have something to say but cos i just feel that i want to think about other things, and cos i guess that u can find discussions about all that.

never mind, i'll just write what i wanted to say today in my post :)

i was confronted to 2 persons today that made me surprised in their behavior. the 1st person, was an officer. these guys are usually poor, and in my opinion, they suffer too. he was, with 2 others, at the door of the embassy of Ivory Coast. i wanted to enter, so he showed me the way, cos to enter, u have to go in the garden around the building till u arrive to the stairs.
after i finished and i came down, i found him and showed me the way out. i thought that he did it cos he wanted to take tips (i usually don't like those situations) so i took 1LE out of my pocket but he refused (now i was embarrassed).

the 2nd person was a taxi driver. i took a taxi from Tahrir Square to Zamalek. just after i entered he said to discuss the fair saying that petrol prices are higher (in egypt they are not going up, they just made a new more expensive type of petrol but the old types still the same). he wanted a big price compared to the distance (he asked for what i would pay to go from Tahrir to Heliopolis). and i wanted to pay half what he asked for. anyway, i payed him more than i was intending to do, but he didn't like it and asked for more. i just wanted to say that maybe i won't deal with him again, but treating customers like this, will make them to dislike him.
just after that situation; i thought about the 1st guy, and the differences between the 2 situations and the 2 people.

4 comments:

  1. First of all welcome back froggy. Happy to see you again.
    I just have a question "Did you offer the officer (zabet) 1 LE?" Or you meant a soldier?" If he was an officer of course he would refuse.
    You know what? One of the most diffcult situations for me is pay a taxi driver in Cairo. At frist I try to burgain, but at last I end up pay him what he asks for.

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  2. he was a soldier (the guards who just sit in their place) not a zabet.
    this taxi driver wanted 8LE (originally 10LE) from Tahrir to Zamalek!!! he was exagerating.
    my friends that i went to visit who are foreigners, they usually pay max 4LE for the same thing and i usually pay max 5LE.

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  3. It all sounds reasonable now.

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  4. I wonder why the TAXI tariffs of decades ago are not re-estimated according to the new life conditions?!!

    The new tariff has to be "backward compatible" with what people pay nowadays!

    What of the benifit of starting a new limousine-like TAXI service???

    My self... I would not pay 50 LE for a ride form el Haram to Soubra!! :D

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