Airport staff, Kenya’s unintentional ambassadors

Last weekend, I passed through Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. It looks much better now, with new duty free shops that finally look world class.

There are neat, airy seats with welcoming views of planes and space to walk around. No wonder the new Greenfield terminal project was put on hold.

I went to the Java restaurant and asked if I could watch a sports channel on TV but the waiter told me that with so many different customer demands, their two television sets were locked on two popular channels – soccer and CNN.

I had plenty of time and an assignment to do about TV, so I walked around the terminal.

Eventually, I found another new restaurant that had an overhead TV silently showing a music channel and sat unattended at the bar counter for 10 minutes, as a busy waitress walked past me several times. She seemed to have an endless number of orders.

She would start by banging the coffee machine to draw a new cup, pass the kitchen window, pick a plate of breakfast eggs and go to serve a table. Despite her many trips, the list of orders seemed endless and she looked quite frustrated.

Other customers would come up and ask for their orders, and at one time she gave an older man the universal palm-up “talk to the hand” signal. He turned and walked out.

MEAL VOUCHER

I finally got her attention and asked for a sports channel. She pushed the remote control to me, saying “I don’t think they have paid” as she went on to serve another order. 

A lady from Zimbabwe came and sat next to me, waiting to place her order and we started chatting as she joined me in trying to get the waitress’ attention.

I explained to her this was not typical of service at Kenyan restaurants, and that she would probably get better service at another restaurant. But apparently her flight had been delayed and she had been given a meal voucher for only this particular restaurant.

After about five minutes, a cook came out of the kitchen and started to help pass around plates of food, and after another five minutes the waitress finally found time to take our orders. Since she had not got a chance to place her order, I advised that my Zimbabwean friend be given a plate of eggs and toast to go with her juice.

The tourist groups had gone now and the waitress seemed relaxed. We were able to chat and I asked if it got busy like this every day, or if she was meant to serve the entire restaurant by herself.

She shrugged like this was routine and got on her phone to enjoy some WhatsApp chats in the solitude of the now largely empty restaurant

FULL, HAPPY RESTAURANT

This reminded me of when I used to work in an airport many years ago. The worst time for us was between 1:30 and 2:30 pm, when about 400 passengers would pass by our gate, all rushing to board a 4:00pm Jumbo Jet to Japan.

The rush was endless, and our boss would not entertain any personal requests for time off to eat lunch or do errands until that rush of Japanese travellers had passed.

Creating a traffic jam at that part of the airport would be noticed by airport managers and would probably cause some trouble for our employer.

That hour was the worst part of the day, and the rest of the time our part of the airport was empty, relaxed, fun station. That was probably how the waitress at this restaurant felt: happy when the place was empty, upset when it was full.

Did she think of what mattered more to the owner of the new restaurant? Did she compute in some way that her job might be in jeopardy if no one ate at the restaurant, that it was in her interest to have a full, happy restaurant? Probably not

Meanwhile dozens of tourists, some maybe on their first trip to Kenya, got a very rude welcome from someone who didn’t realise she was not only an ambassador for her restaurant but also for an airline and the country. 

They may not remember her name, or that of the restaurant, but they know the name of the airline and the country. This is how a country's image is damaged, inadvertently.

Twitter: @bankelele