In Israel, most of the sales people are very nice, but we came across one that is really nasty. He sells good quality pashminas and clothes along one of the stretches of Via Dolorosa of the old city. My mum fell in love with a black pashmina, and his asking price was USD15.00, and when my mum asked if he could lower the price, he just asked, "Are you buying or not?", to which my mum said, "Not at this price". After that, he just threw the scarf back and said, "Fine, no big deal."
Can you believe that? We decided to go somewhere else, but since we could not find another place with a nice scarf at a good price, my mum decided to go back there again, as she admitted that the quality of his products are really good in comparison, and upon thinking, USD15.00 is pretty reasonable for that kind of quality. She asked the person where the scarf was made, he just asked, "Can you read English?". We said yes, and he then said, "Then please read the label!"
However, the label consists of Hebrew words, with just "Jerusalem" stated in English, hence we only wanted to clarify. Finally we established that the scarf was made in Jerusalem, and my mum asked again if it is indeed 100% cashmere, the person just turned the scarf over grumpily and pointed to the wordings "100% cashmere".
We bought the scarf and went off. His attitude was really a turn off! Should he not serve customers with a smile and a gracious attitude, considering so many tourists from all over go there to shop? It is inevitable there could be just some who may not be able to read English!
After we were done with our shopping, we wanted to hitch a cab to go back to our hotel. We had to go past the Jewish Quarters onto the main road. We saw two cabs, and the drivers said we had to take both cabs. They quoted us USD20.00 each. We then said that price was a bit high, considering there were six of us and we would prefer to take just one cab.
The first cabbie said if that is the case, then we walk. So we said, ok, we would walk. We walked all the way downhill from the old city to the main road, and saw a big SUV cab coming. We waved at the cabbie and asked if he was able to bring us to our hotel, to which he said yes.
We then asked how much, and he quoted us USD5.00 per person, making it USD30.00 for the whole cab, but we could all get into the cab together. Considering that it was almost dark and it was his last shift, we decided to just take it. And the cabbie was so nice to drop us directly at the door of our hotel, instead of just the car park!
Our experience in Israel would have been better if we did not encounter some of these rude people. But I guess these people are everywhere, and we just get to see all kinds of people when we go places, is it not? These are the things that make experiences memorable and meaningful.
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