Why Would`nt He Serve Me?

[Zpete]

...staring at me with a big grim on his face...continued staring still with the silly grim on his face...

Yes, that grim look should have told you everything before you even opened your mouth...

grim look, yeah.

Silly grim?

I am lost.

[distortedlink]

Oh Dear me.

Some posters are hinting that I stink, others saying that my Thai is offensive.

I`m a nice polite well turned out guy, really. If you met me, you would like me, honest.

I dont know why the nasty man would`nt serve me. That`s it, I`m going to open up a bottle of the ole Johnny Walkers and forget this ever happened.

[jeffer]

You do get some people who just don't know what to do when a foreigner enters their shop and want to run away from you or hide because they can't handle it. Crazy but true.

I walked into a computer shop yesterday, one other customer and 5 staff. Went to the counter to be served and everyone backed away. I'm not too scary looking unless I need to be, was dressed well enough and had showered so not that. After a moment one of the male staff started talking to the other staff and the conversation was about who was going to have to deal with the foreigner because none of them spoke English. After 30 seconds the youngest girl was delegated the task and when she approached me and I said hello in Thai you could hear a sigh of relief from everyone. Maybe they had problems before with foreigners but once they heard me speak a couple of words of Thai they relaxed. The really amusing part was when I was getting my change. The girl in charge of the money was literally shaking as she fumbled trying to get together some small notes and coins to give me my change, stealing a glance at me for a split second then some more fumbling and then another furtive glance. Even all the other staff were laughing because she was so nervous dealing with a foreigner.

Had a man start yelling at me for no reason once when I entered his upcountry shop to buy a can of iced coffee. Found out later that apparently I looked like someone involved in policing counterfeit goods or excise avoidance and this chap was selling cigarettes or tobacco without paying taxes, bringing stuff in from another country or something.

Had a shop opposite where I lived for a while and the man there would never serve me, always walk away and his wife would have to come to the counter to serve me. I found out the reason was because one of his daughters was married to a Brit who he didn't think treated her well enough so because of this he would have nothing to do with foreigners.

[dkstoney]

I think David Lynch is filming a new reality TV series.

[mmushr00m]

Maybe he was just taking the piss.

Bored with work and decides...hmmmm the next guy that walks in Im gonna freak him out by staring at him....maybe thats why the girl was looking at you like that, to see your reaction.

I am sure some of you have done that, I know I have.

[cmsally]

My housekeeper is from Sanpatong. You can see her eyes glaze over and go into lock down when anyone speaks to her in central Thai. She only likes to converse in Kham Muang or Yong; so maybe there is your answer.

[kmart]

I've had a couple of instances like that. Some Thai people just "freeze" when a foreigner appears suddenly in front of them. Relaxed body language, a smile, and speaking simple Thai usually helps out.

When someone just decides they do not like you for whatever reason, there is not much you can do about it, apart from speaking Thai in an excessively polite, loud (sarcastic) voice and laughing at them as you walk out.

[Scott]

I have over the years run into this a few times as well. I don't, however, concern myself with it. There are too many shops selling stuff and the folks in the next one will probably be most happy to serve you.

Since they made no attempt to serve you, I doubt it's your smell, since that would have required approaching you first (unless of course you smell like a rotting corpse). I doubt it has to do with your looks, since many folks going to the drug store are not at the top of their game. I doubt you were the first non-Asian they had run into, either, since even the remotest corners of Thailand have tourists and most of them would end up entering a shop for one reason or another.

So, don't worry about it and don't dignify being ignored with any comment, just take your business elsewhere.

Best of luck to you.

[girlx]

I recently posted a thread about rude shop people on the ladies' branch. i have noticed more and more of them lately, especially in BKK.

[Shotime]

Do you bring your pit bull in with you?

[roygsd]

Today I visited San Pa Tong market for some shopping.

Went into a small drug store at the side of the market, needed some cough medicine. In the shop working was a young girl assistant and a guy in his late 30s.

On the shelf were some bottles of medicine in boxes that looked like cough medicine but everything on the boxes was printed in Chinese and Thai so I was unable to read what kind of medicine it was.

The guy stood behind the counter staring at me with a big grim on his face, the girl was further down the counter peering at me as if I just landed from the planet Mercury.

I can speak enough Thai to ask for things and with a smile on my face explained to the guy that I have a sore throat and cough, does he have any medicine? The guy just continued staring still with the silly grim on his face. Than I said, do you speak English, he nodded, yes I do. Again still smiling I asked the same question this time in English and again he ignored me. After a couple of minutes I became bored and frustrated but still in a polite way I asked, why wont you answer me? than I sat down on a chair staring at him. It was stale mate, no one getting anyway. I could only think that for some reason this guy didn't want to serve me. I decided to walk out, on the way saying (rightly or wrongly) in a calm voice to the guy, are you stupid or what? he replied in perfect English, are you so clever?

Once outside the shop, I wondered, what the hel_l was all that about?

I can tell you that I am always polite and never an awkward customer when shopping.

This has happened to me 3 times in difference shops over the last 5 years, the previous being in a computer software shop, where I decided to buy some Cds. I picked up the CDs to pay the lady, she turned her back on me, walked out of her shop, stood outside and refused to re enter until I left. In all these instances I was the only customer in the shop.

Has this ever happened to you? Is it something I'm doing wrong? Maybe I am using the wrong brand of soap, who knows.

99.99% of my time here in Thailand I never have any problems but when these things do happen it is unsettling and does leave a bad taste in the mouth afterwards.

I often wonder if people select their avitar to refect their personality?

having seen your avitar is it at all possible that your manner was considered by the shop keeper as agressive or confrontatinal in some way? I ask this bcause you say that this is the 3rd time this type of thn has happened to you.

I can understand why the other shopkeeper got upset with you for removing theC D's from their cover's, they are easily scratched or damaged and with respect I am sure you would not wish to purchase a package that had been previosly been opened, I seriously doubt manypeople would want to risk purchasing something that looked like it had been tampered with.

Any sympathy I might have had for you dissapreared when I read you decided to sit down in the guys shop and started staring at him, this is very confrontational and once you started that crap there was no way you could reasonably expect any guy much less a thai guy to serve you.

Staring out people is another form of bullying, trying to intimidate someone into complying with your requirements isnt clever, if fact it could be downright dangerous for your health in Thailand, but you have been there long enough to know that anyway.

Just a suggestion, why not go back to the shop, speak in english, eat a bit of humble pie if necessary, apolgise for your chidish behavior and ask for an explanation as to why he would not serve you, who knows perhaps your thai isnt as good as you think it is and you said something out of place?

Mind you on reflection asking a guy to give you medication which you cannot read, particularly when you have tried to make him lose face in front of a young thai female isnt such a smart move, perhaps you just steer clear of the shop in future and most of all learn fron the situation. Alternatively getting someone else to do your shopping might resolve the problem.

roy gsd

[Westerner]

Distortedlink. Why don't you get a mate to go into the shop and see if he gets the same reaction. If he does, then you will know it's because the guy hates foreigners. If not, then you will know it's something about you.

Edited May 30, 2008 by Westerner

[jayjayjayjay]

Don't worry, the people in Sum-Pa-Tdong are a bit like this ............ 55555 you've got to speak the local dialect to be understood, even if you Thai is perfect(ie, I agree with cmsally) because it was a pharmacy doesn't mean this guy has an education ....... 5555

Edited May 30, 2008 by jayjayjayjay

[mrt273nva]

I had an incident a while back that is semi similar to the OP's story. I've copied it again from a post that I did a year and a half ago.

i was in a CD shop with my friend looking for some music. the lady in the shop was friendly and played a cd at my request to see if it was the same title i was looking for. a large thai man came in the shop and turned off the music before it was even 10 seconds into playing. i explained to him that i wanted to hear the cd to make sure it was the right one. he was persistent in not allowing me to hear the cd. fair enough i thought, i told him i won't buy that cd. this is where everything went wrong. he exploded on me going off on a rant about how farang walk around saying what ever they want and doing whatever they want. he started saying that just because farang have money they do what they want (he was covered in gold mind you). i turned to my friend and said, "lets not buy anything here". he then started cussing me out. i don't know where he learned all these vulgarities but it was loud and obsene. i tried to find his logic and there was none. i explained to him in thai that i live down the street, i'm not the evil farang that he had in his mind. he cursed me some more. again in thai i said that he was speaking very bad. i called him crazy and left.

[Briggsy]

It's the attack dog that you take everywhere with you.

[rewket]

maybe that girl and that guy, had farang boyfriends who continuously had sex with 20 others at the same time and now they hate everyone of the white color.. quite common

[freitag1]

Maybe he was just a bit retarded. I see many disabled people working in stores. I don't mean this in a negative way this is just my observation.

[altman]

Maybe he was just a bit retarded. I see many disabled people working in stores. I don't mean this in a negative way this is just my observation.

that was my reaction to the op as well.

i have had similar examples of being ignored or being, intentionally?, misunderstood. generally i try a couple of times to make sure that it is not just a bad day for me and then i leave. while my leaving and taking my money with me may not change their behavior it does satisfy me that they will have to work a little bit harder before they can take that trip down to hua hin. som nam na.

today i was standing at a counter where they sell soup. six different kinds. i speak some thai but so badly that it is usually easier to point and gesticulate. so i pointed to soup #2, raised a finger to indicate one serving, and hooked the thumb to show take away.

what i got back was a look of total incomprehension. this lady was located in the middle of a busy farang frequented market. she spoke enough english to correctly enunciate my change when due. i tried pointing and i tried english but not thai. all she does is sell soup. so it wasn't like i was asking for her to have to make a choice. or really, to even understand. just do what she does for a thousand other people every day.

anyway, i got my soup but left with that bad feeling we often get when dealing with foreign languages and cultures.

it happens.

it isn't just thais. i had a lady in malaysia turn her back and ignore me when i wanted/needed to buy a bottle of water.

and as an exponent of an unpopular point of view, i have had farangs who disagree with my philosophy treat me with disrespect as well.

best to place the behavior in perspective. ignorant people act ignorantly.

[Alonso's Army]

I bet the shop was a Chinese herbal medicine shop and not a pharmacy ala Boots, Watsons. These shops might have a farang customer once in a solar eclipse. The people who own these shops or work in them can be very condescending to customers that aren't regulars. My gut feeling is the the person serving thought the farang thought this was a pratical joke and tried playing along with it.

[FBN]

Today I visited San Pa Tong market for some shopping.

I often wonder if people select their avitar to refect their personality?

Yes, I'm sure; but I always get served politely

[HS Mauberley]

Maybe he was just taking the piss.

Bored with work and decides...hmmmm the next guy that walks in Im gonna freak him out by staring at him....maybe thats why the girl was looking at you like that, to see your reaction.

I am sure some of you have done that, I know I have.

I agree. Whenever I've had jobs in shops, we'd always <deleted> around with customers like this - I thought everyone who did retail work did this (at least when they're not nicking stock).

[PeaceBlondie]

When a shop clerk or vendor goes mental on me, I just start talking Spanish or batsi-kop, or I give them a few lines of Code Section 6653(d)(3)(F) of the Internal Revenue Code. I haven't had the shopkeepers shut the doors on me since I tried to buy a can of Delaware Punch in Acteal Arriba, and I could have ordered it in batsi-kop. Also, I have never stunk like a rotting corpse. All the Yong people I have known speak Central and Northern Thai, but their grandmothers don't.

[astral]

It must be you.......................

Did you take off the Alien mask that they give you at the immigration desk at the airport.

[Heng]

There has long been something of a vicious and sometimes amusing cycle going on in Thai and foreign relations (and one can see the same in a lot of places in the world where this is the norm between any number of various cultures). Both Thais and foreigners alike (see any of thousands of TV threads for examples) lump the other into particular "categories" and stereotypes.

Was getting my hair cut in Royal Garden the other day when a 30-ish farang gal walks in speaking Russian (clearly motioning about a haircut and the cost). My barber says to her in Thai 400 Baht? That was NOT the price, as it's clearly written in the window that it's 180. The Russian gal rightly passed on the overpriced cut, and I asked why did you elect to charge her 400 Baht? She said because yesterday some farang came in, got really picky about his cut (probably because of the language barrier) halfway through the cut, stormed out without paying and tipped my barber with a "f--- you!" Both parties, as well as individuals from both cultures have long been formulating opinions and generalizations (sometimes correct, sometimes rather silly and near sighted) about each other in the same way, with similar 'collateral damage' affecting other random folks as well.

Edited May 30, 2008 by Heng

[Ijustwannateach]

In my experience, usually this indicates that the person is possibly suffering "language shock"- it doesn't mean that the OP wasn't speaking perfectly functional Thai- it's just that the shopowner sees a white face, has a panic attack about English (he might have had some pretty bad experiences studying it, especially the way it's done by rote here) and freezes up. Even though you might be speaking the local lingo, he doesn't hear it- he's focussed on how he doesn't understand English.

Conversation between a white friend of mine and a Japanese receptionist:

My friend (in Japanese): "[Hello, I have an appointment with Mr. Miyamoto.]"

Her (in English): "Sorry... don't speak English"

My friend: "[That's ok, I can speak Japanese.]"

Her (in English): "No... English."

My friend: "[i'm not speaking English. I'm speaking Japanese to you right now.]"

Finally she had to go and get another worker to come speak with him- the other worker understood him perfectly (Japanese isn't one of those languages where the pronunciation is all that troublesome). I've heard him speak Japanese, and he does fine.

But this is an example of what could have happened- without necessarily any baggage between "racial" types.

"S"

[Crushdepth]

This made me laugh. My work colleagues have coined this 'talking dog syndrome'. They don't expect you to 'talk', and even though what you say may be relatively easy to understand, there is this preconception that you can't speak Thai and therefore they don't 'hear' you. Its all the more funny because my Vietnamese and Malaysian colleages speak less Thai than me, but the locals look to them automatically when say ordering food and can 'understand' them.

Childeren are much better listeners than adults, too.

Edited May 30, 2008 by Crushdepth

[PrBkkPr]

Where is Zaza, I would love to hear her comments about this as she had in the one listed in the Ladies Forum.