File under: Cultural Differences

Today was an extremely beautiful day in Bishkek, sunny and in the 50s.  Better yet, it was somewhat breezy so the haze and smog wasn't as extreme as usual.  So, I took very long walk across the city and found myself a mile or two away from my apartment craving a small snack and a pot of tea.  I ended up walking into a cafe and ordered a snack.  There was a man and his son at the table across from me.  Right after they were served their drinks, the man got up and spoke briefly to the server and then left the restaurant.  Through the window I could see him wandering off with another guy, looking as though they were about to conduct some sort of business; and within a minute or two the man was completely out of sight.  Obviously, the little boy was a bit anxious about the whole situation.

That's when the server took over.  She brought the boy the pizza that the father had ordered for them, served him a slice, and then cut the slice into bite-sized pieces for him when he had trouble eating it.  She did that for the second slice as well.

And when she wasn't busy serving me and the other customers she spoke to the child very nicely and engaged him in conversation, just to occupy him and to keep him from being upset.

I asked the server if she knew the man and the little boy.  "No, I don't know them at all," she told me.  Finally, about twenty minutes later, as I was about to leave, the man came back, barely acknowledged the server, and rejoined the meal as if nothing had happened--and the server returned to being the aloof, emotionless presence she had been before the man's departure, leaving me to wonder about differences in culture and what all this might have meant.

The service charge is customarily added to the bill in Kyrgyzstan and customers seldom leave a tip, but today I made an exception.