Davids Tea and A Summer Filled with Delicious Teas

To whom it may concern,

I am a frequent shopper (and visitor) at the Square One, Mississauga Davids Tea.

I am an avid coffee drinker but Davids Tea's delicious and abundant teas have made me into a tea-convert.

I have introduced DT to friends near and far.

And recently I informed sales people in Square One (Walmart and Whole Foods) of DT's promotions and sales items when they commented on the lovely blue DT bag with my Alpine Punch Tea.

I will always remain a loyal and eager customer. But it is with regret that I have to report a saleswoman who consistently behaves contrary to DT's first class employees that provide me with great service.

The saleswoman is at the Square One Davids Tea. Her Employee Number is 10006670, which I obtained from a receipt of our latest interaction, which was today, 7/20/2018, around 10:25 am (Transaction: #0000364983, Store: #00097, Terminal: #00097-R1). This is the third unpleasant incident I have had with her, which all boil down to her unwillingness to provide me with proper service and attention as I shop in your store.

I was planning to buy an ice tea pitcher on a 1/3 off sale ($28 to $19). I had seen it yesterday and stopped by to pick it up today.

I walked to the front of the store to look for it. But couldn't find it. While I was searching, 10006670 called out "Good morning" from the back. I wasn't paying attention and continued looking. The employee then shouted out in a more aggressive manner as though demanding my attention "Good morning!" I smiled, turned around and replied "Good morning," and continued searching.

Then I went to the back of the store where the employee was located. She was going through some kind of book which looked like she was doing inventory or bookkeeping. I waited a while, then asked her if there was any tea to sample for today. She gave me a cold tea but I asked what was the hot tea. Again she reluctantly looked up from her task and said something like "What can I do for you?"

By this time, I was angry and said that I have been repeating myself all this time.

We went back and forth for a while. Then I said "Are you going to keep this up? Is this customer service?"

"Employee are people too!" she said rudely and nonchalantly.

"I don't know about that," I rebutted.

At which point the woman has tears in her eyes and says: " I take offence at that!"

Another saleswoman had come in by that time, perhaps hearing our interaction and to relieve the woman now in tears. This second woman is Asian, who I am sorry to say had provided me with a similar distracted service just the day before and had in fact misinformed me about the pitcher sales until I put some pressure on her for more concrete information.

By then I had paid for my pitcher, and as the first saleswoman handed me my receipt, I simply walked out of the store.

Davids Tea is a great place. I am reporting these two incidents because I believe they are isolated. I hope the company can resolve them if indeed I have made the correct assessment and that there was some deficiency in customer service, at least towards me.

Thank you for your attention. And I look forward to a summer filled with your delicious teas.

Sincerely,

Kidist Paulos Asrat

"Les Anglais"

The contemporary thinking about foreigners turns them into moral, cultural or social issues, but downplays the most important one: actual logistics.

Foreigners are people who travel to lands which are not their own, with cultures and social structures different from theirs, with languages they don't speak or speak without the fluency of their own languages.

In less progressive eras, when a foreigner came to a country other than his own, he had to understand the country he came to and subjugate himself to these different circumstances, and behave accordingly. He would always remain a foreigner, however many years he has lived there, and however many obstacle tests he has passed (and with distinction even).

There was an intriguing and endearing time in my life in Paris.

When we just arrived, our apartment was in a neighborhood which had its own boulangerie, patisserie, cafe, tabac and all the other accoutrements of French neighborhood life. It was like a mini-village within the large city, as all Parisian residential neighborhoods are (our next neighbourhood was slightly more cosmopolitan being near the Tour Eiffel and the shopkeepers were friendly but too busy to ask for details, although they always greeted us familiarly).

I went to a French bilingual school for the first six months and later we went to the first of two boarding schools in England, in Kent.

We had always been English speakers, having had our elementary education in Addis Ababa at what was then called The English School. I was fluent in English at a very early age.

As is always the case, neighborhood merchants, especially those one frequents regularly and with a Mom & Pop management style, make an effort to know their clientele, and even their names.

This particular French boulanger and his wife would greet us in a familiar way and I'm sure, when we (the kids) no longer came accompanied by their mother, asked: "Ou sont les enfant?"

By then my mother knew some French and no doubt told them as best she could that we were at school in England.

This was an instinctive association by country. If this Arab-looking family sent their children to a pensionat in England, then they must be of the English cultural persuasion and therefore they are English. Most Arabs in France have a French - colonial - association, and they would have kept their children within the French culture.

On a side note, this was the argument - the debate - used to say that North Africans (Moroccans and Algerians mostly) were French because of this colonial past, and that the huge numbers of immigrant North Africans can live in France as Frenchmen. Of course Arabs feel differently: they ARE NOT Frenchmen!!! They would always be Arab.

Back to my Parisian neighbourhood. We became known as "Les Anglais!" The patriotic neighbourhood baker and his wife (his wife mostly because she was the one who ran the storefront and communicated with the customers) associated us with their perennial and historical antagonists, the English, those most foreign of foreigners!

But she loved us! Who wouldn't! This cute threesome, with their coats and hoods in the winter rushing to school early in the morning, or coming in for their favorite "Kim-Cone" ice cream in the summer which they bought with long-saved pennies, now going across the seas to learn things! How brave they are!

"Quand viennent-ils, les enfant?" she would ask my mother those long months when we were away.

But we always remained "Les Anglais."