ITSNOTPOSSIBLE.NL

The Invisible Customer. Episode 2: Invisible Customer vs The Blind Optician

BASED ON A TRUE STORY (unfortunately)!

CAST:
Itsnotpossible.nl reader Paul....................The invisible Customer
Pearle Optician............................................The Blind Optician
Pearle Optician staff....................................The Other Blind Dude

LOCATION: Pearle Opticians

THE PLOT

I arrive for my contact lens appointment just as one of the staff is unlocking
the door. In perfect Dutch I say that I have an appointment at 10 o'clock - in
other words right now - and he says to go and take a seat upstairs.

I wait as staff go up and down the stairs past me, some say good
morning. I smile pleasantly back and return the greeting.

The contact lens guy is nowhere to be seen. I wait. I read. I read the same three weeks old Elsevier
article again (or was it HP De Tijd, I was so bored I can't recall).
Now it is 10:15. Just as I am about to go downstairs to ask one
of the other staff what the problem is, the contact lens guy comes down from
the next floor up.
He ignores me even though I am sitting outside his room,
even though there is no-one else in sight and the fact that I look up at him,
smiling a greeting. He continues to ignore me.

At 10:20, just as I am about to stand up and approach the contact lens guy, who
by this time has a phone to his ear, he asks me if I am here for contact
lenses. Stopping myself from giving a sarcastic reply I tell him about the
appointment.

"It's not possible!"

The Invisible Customer. Episode 1: Invisible Customer vs. Brain-dead Waitress

LOCATION:
Café Baton, Herengracht 82, lunchtime.

CAST:
Me and a friend.................Invisible Customers
The Baton Staff.................The Brain-Dead Waitresses

DURATION:
40 minutes

THE PLOT:
Two invisible customers (Me and a friend) go to Café Baton for lunch. They sit at the table. Of course there's no menu on the table.
They wait for somebody to show up with the menu or to take the orders. Nobody in sight. Suddenly a waitress walks by. One of the invisible customers tries to grab her attention but in vain. She's gone already.
For the next 30 minutes no waitress in sight. Bird flu? Sudden extinction? The mystery thickens.
After 40 minutes the invisible customers decide to give up. But wait! On their way out, at the door, a waitress suddenly appears. She smiles and with a chilling high pitched voice she says: "Doeiiiiiiiiii!!!"

THE END

Maybe from the same people who say "if you don't like it go back home"?

A friend of mine, a fucking foreiger, got this note some time ago because he - I quote - "put the garbage at the wrong time". Uuuuuuuhhhhh

Bad service and the "If you don't like it go back to your home country" mentality.

Funny how a common Dutch answer to criticism is "you don't like it, then go back to where you come from." It says a lot about how some Dutch people (see: I underlined some) perceive themselves (as if the Dutch Golden Age didn't end centuries ago) and how they look at foreigners.

Superiority complex? Ignorance? Arrogance? Envy? Just plain racism? Dutch humor we don't understand? Bad hair day? Too much rain? I don't know, and to be honest it's completely irrelevant.

Met gouda, goed. Met mozzarella, niet goed. A tale of broodje kaas manichaeism.

If you thought it was a prerogative of the Bush administration to divide the world in Good and Bad, think again. The kind guy at Ruhe Delicatessen, the night shop on Prinsenstraat 13 in Amsterdam, seems to have serious moral issues with mozzarella cheese being sliced and inserted between two slices of bread.