A Scolding

Do you ever get annoyed at poor customer service? I’ve noticed that most shops in Eastern Province don’t believe in such a thing. No matter, I still need the shops to buy things – and there ain’t no beating about that bush.

One service that I highly romanticize is tailoring. Tailors in Canada are usually expensive. Like most things here, I can afford services whereas others cannot. Given the material, the standard price for sewing a custom dress shirt is $4 CDN.

On June 5, I dropped off material for three dress shirts. After ten days of delay, I was told to come back in a week. I gave the tailor an ear-full and said I wouldn’t pay the full price. One thing led to another and I got a $1 discount. I waited for one hour on a weathered bench in the shade of this cubby-hole tailor. Apparently, the tailors only work on your clothes if you stand there tapping your foot.

With the tailor located one street over from the market, I busied myself listening to friends calling out to each other, cars revving, tinkling of bike bells, and so on. I hurriedly took the two shirts that were finally ready, paid, and left. When I got home they were approximately XXXL. Have I started a bwana (boss)- belly?

The tailor told me the third shirt would be ready at the end of the next week. I left for Chipata on a dime before the end of that week, and so my shirt lay abandoned on some hook in a Petauke tailor, while I buzzed around Eastern Province and Malawi. I returned to Petauke yesterday, and was shocked that the shirt was unchanged from when I left it.

“It’s been here for a month! Why isn’t it finished?” I scolded the second-in-command woman.

“Ah, I was sick! I had the cough-ee” –which I could’ve mistook for Coffee, had she not pointed to her chest.

“But… it’s been 4 weeks!! And I know there are three other employees who work here, I’ve seen them!” My cheeks reddened with embarrassment for giving this woman hell.

“Give me 45 minutes while I fetch buttons-ies. When you go to Chipata?” I was planning to go immediately, and I said so.

She went off down the alleyway. Her pace would have been better matched to a response like “I’m going to Chipata next month.”

The head-tailor worked, snipping, sewing, measuring, folding like origami and a knee pumping the Singer.

After I raised my voice at her, the second-in-command woman’s demeanor remained friendly as ever. Reserved, but cordial. She observed me sitting on a porch step, and so she fetched me a chair. She set it gently in the shade (with impressive one-handed strength). My apple was seated on the porch beside me. She gestured to it, plucked it from the step, rubbed it on her chitenge (dress), and said that it would get dusty if it was left there. She plopped it in my bike helmet and returned to work.

Even though I was an ass to her, she was still nice to me through and through. A cleaner slate than I could muster.

Re-tailored to fit me by a more trustworthy gentleman, in less than an hour.