Wyn Drabble: Service with a smile, but little else

You thought I finished with Fiji last week, didn't you? Not so. There is so much more to tell you about because I was there for a whole week!
In last week's piece, I only really covered the issue of trying to purchase food. This week I would like to turn my attentions to accommodation and retailing.
On the first night - admittedly at a budget hotel - I had to ask the following question: "Please may I have a towel and some bed linen?"
Madam swiftly berated her daughter or niece for not having made up the room correctly. The girl was sent to get some linen for me immediately.
She returned with a pile of folded linen for me to take to my room and use as I saw fit.
To fill time while I waited for my linen, Madam ordered her son or nephew to fix me a coffee. It took 20 minutes because, after getting the operation under way, he wandered off and did something else. Madam ended up doing it herself. I'll bet the young guy copped a clip around the ear a little later.
I decided to move a little upmarket for night two. I chose a motel which I would rank as moderate, based partly on the fact that it cost more than twice what the first one had. At check-in, I wanted to pay by credit card but that proved just a tad tricky.
The receptionist told me she would have to take my card "somewhere else" to swipe it. I told her the card was not to leave my sight so I would be coming with her. Without so much as a word to another family waiting in the foyer to check in, she closed the security grille, locked the office door and led me on our mission.
We passed through the car park, up some steep steps, across a road and into another "sister" motel to process my card on the zapper which both motels apparently shared. Then we walked back across the road, down the stairs, through the car park, she unlocked the office and lifted the security grille and we completed check-in formalities. To my surprise, the other family was still there!
From then on, I advanced to slightly-above-moderate accommodation. That did not mean there weren't things to wonder about. In a hotel that would easily rate three stars, I ordered a beer at the poolside bar, a large horseshoe arrangement. When I asked for the beer, the barman leaned down and extracted one from the fridge.
He then carried it across to the other side of the bar - a good four metres away - and opened it with an opener that was resting on the benchtop there. He then brought the beer back to me but did not bring the opener so that it would be handy to the beer fridge for the next order. He would obviously make the same trip for each ensuing beer order.
The next night, when service was well under way, I went to the bottle opener side of the bar and ordered a beer - the same sort of beer. Without a word, the barman walked away, out of the bar and disappeared through a distant door. I could not imagine what I had done to upset him.
All was well, though. In a few minutes he returned with a case of the beer, clearly indicating that he had not bothered to top up stock before service. He emptied the case into the fridge, brought one across for me, opened it and handed it to me. Estimated travel distance - about 100 metres. Time - considerable.
Retail outlets can be even more fun and in many shops you can buy a selection of ... well ... anything, really. In the same shop you might buy a frypan, a penguin ornament, a dangly thing of many colours, a Noddy-themed pencil or a fresh coconut.
Lautoka is surely the capital of what I shall loosely term "general merchandisers". Just a couple of examples should put you in the picture.
The window display of one shop featured - as is reasonable - souvenir tea towels. But with a map of the African continent on each one?
Here's a handwritten sign I saw taped to the window of one general merchant. I'm sure this would attract your custom: "Face cream sold here."
On another shop window: "All clothes 50c each."
Did I buy anything?
No.
Wyn Drabble is a teacher of English, a writer, public speaker and musician.