A few weeks ago, after eleven at night, on a street with hardly any light and no one in sight, I was asked to vacate a taxi from a popular service in the Ruimveldt area after an argument with the driver. My offence was to question the disparity between the price that was being asked for the drop and the price paid two nights before. In the car with me was a male colleague. We had just left the home of another associate where we had a meeting about a project we were working on. The car was supposed to drop me first to my home and then my associate to the bus park.
However, the driver became so agitated that he suddenly claimed that he was not in the mood to do both drops and so his solution was to ask me to exit the vehicle. Of course, my colleague left the car with me and the driver sped away, leaving a trail of expletives.
As we walked back to the home of the colleague where our meeting was held, many questions went through my head. What if the situation had escalated to something worse? Was I wrong for questioning the fare when I knew I had never paid that price from that location when using the same service? What could I have said and done differently? What was going on with the driver of that vehicle that made him so angry and thoughtless? How could any decent man think to put a young woman out of a vehicle at that time of night with no thought or concern for her safety?
I was also angry; angry because too often these are experiences we have as Guyanese. Our rights as citizens and patrons are trampled and the lines of respect are blurred. In many instances when we question the deficient services being offered to us, we are met with rude and unconcerned personnel.
We see this happening with the utility companies. When a problem occurs with the service, we are made to wait weeks or even months sometimes to have it rectified. We are often left feeling hopeless and enraged because in Guyana we have few options and sometimes none. Of course, there are times when the same companies operate with professionalism and reliability. In those instances, they should be commended, but the fact that daily there are complaints from discontented customers means there is much work to be done.
When it comes to our banks, we have a few options. There are banks where you can conduct business with no setbacks and then there are times when you are left feeling irritated. Why are there instances where folks have to stand in line for more than an hour because of a shortage of staff or staff being on break? As a customer, I understand that no one can sit behind a computer all day, but at some banks there seems to be no system in place for when one person goes on a break, to have another person stand in. With thousands of qualified young people looking for work, no bank in this country should be short-staffed.
And then there are those retail places where you have to question whether they are paying you to do business with them because of their attitudes; places where they follow you around with an eye of suspicion; places where information on products is not forthcoming; places where they shout at customers for making errors; and places where it is seems like an offence to request a receipt when one is not presented upon payment.
Hotels can also be difficult. Recently, I stayed at a hotel that was beautiful, but it fell down on service. Never should you have to ask a hotel to clean your room. And if breakfast is included in the package, never should you be given a crappy meal and be told that not all hotels include breakfast in their packages. So, therefore, the logic is that they could feed a person an egg and a slice of bread and call it breakfast because not all hotels offer a free meal? Never mind that you actually pay to stay there.
There are many other instances that can be cited where the Guyanese populace is treated with disrespect when accessing services. Dealing with institutions, such as utility companies, banks and retail outlets, is one thing, but even when accessing care, folks are often treated badly. The health care system, especially the public health care system, has many issues. Within said system there are compassionate doctors and nurses who truly have the best interest of those who seek their services at heart. However, I think those who choose to be unkind often overshadow those who really care. There are times when sick people have been made to wait hours to get help and there are instances where people have died because of this. I’ve always questioned why some nurses seem so angry. I have wondered if the years of witnessing sickness and death somehow took away a part of their humanity and left them permanently scarred. I have wondered if it is because they feel they are underpaid and overworked in a job that calls for patience and an abundance of internal strength. Whatever it is, it hurts both ways and in many cases poor people feel the pressure because they have no other options.
But sometimes challenges are faced even when you pay for health care. Imagine a private hospital, presenting you with a handwritten bill for a hefty amount of cash, with no breakdown as to what the charges were for and the hospital staff seeming more offended when asked for a proper typed out bill and a breakdown. This was my experience a few years ago and there was even a threat to disallow me from returning home until the bill written on the leaf of a notepad was cleared. Eventually, the hospital did the correct thing, but it left a lasting impression on me and I would never encourage anyone I actually cared about to access the services of that particular hospital.
It is unfortunate that many of us Guyanese have resolved that there is nothing we can do to effect change and have been conditioned to accept the way we are treated by some private as well as public establishments. But we have to think about the consequences and how it affects the health of the nation. People who are frustrated can act out in ways that could cause damage to their fellow man; ways like turning to violence. People who are frustrated will try to escape to places where they think they will be treated better. We all know what a huge migration rate we have and once a country keeps losing human resources, the body of minds to build and move it forward will get weaker.
The instances of bad service must become an exception instead of the norm. If, together, we demand better from every place we encounter bad service, they will have no choice but to improve on what they have to offer and that could only mean betterment for all of us.
