In a weekly series, The National reporter Hugh Naylor looks in detail at everyday life in the Emirates DUBAI // A ravenous Mohammed Sukam approached the Fatburger fast-food restaurant in the Dubai Mall on a recent afternoon with one objective. "A chicken burger, please," he said, addressing the nine employees squeezed shoulder-to-shoulder behind the counter.
About 20 minutes later, instead of revelling in the satisfaction of having a full stomach, the 33-year-old Turk left the food court with his ears ringing and a sense of slight bewilderment. "I just wanted a burger," he recalled. What he got was an all-too-typical Dubai service gauntlet of too many servers, hosts and hostesses, many of whom are not fulfilling their job descriptions because of their overabundance.
Employers in the fast-food chains and coffee shops of New York or London typically strive to have their customers outnumber their wait staff. In Dubai, whether in chain restaurants or local mom-and-pop eateries, it can seem as if they prefer ratios of three, four, or even five waiters per customer. The result gives added meaning to the cliché "too many cooks spoil the broth". Orders taken by one waiter are then delivered incorrectly by another, bills paid by credit card get charged to other customers' tabs and varying language skills often transform orders for skinny lattes into mochas.
"You wonder why there are five waiters for this," remarked Bonita Block, 32, a South African flight attendant who was leaving a half-empty coffee house in the Mall of the Emirates. "I'm not complaining about it, but in South Africa if you had five they would come to your table and take your order." The phenomenon of overstaffing is partly a consequence of inadequate training and a six-day-a-week work schedules, said Willem Selen, a professor at UAE University who specialises in productivity management. Employers could be trying to compensate for what he said was low worker output in the UAE.
"It could be related to training, different work ethics, very long working hours, one day off a week," he said. "All this may contribute to the fact [that] within an allocated period of time you have relatively less productivity." In Mr Sukam's case, it was the combination of a small army of employees dressed in black shirts and trousers and red hats, the Latina pop diva Gloria Estefan and an unusual company protocol that threw him off guard.
First there were the three employees who crowded the register, each asking what he wanted. He placed his order twice. Once was not enough because the lyrics of Ms Estefan's Rhythm Is Gonna Get You blaring out of the restaurant's speakers were drowning out his words. "The music was loud and I couldn't hear them," he said about the tune by the Miami Sound Machine's former lead singer. "They had trouble hearing me."
When his order finally registered, the woman who ultimately took it yelled out, "Fatburger!" Suddenly the entire staff, including a man who was listlessly scraping dried grease off the grill, erupted in unison in a mandatory chant of "Fat-burg-er!" "No, no," Mr Sukam recalled telling the three employees vying for his order. "I want the chicken burger. Chicken." A few minutes after redressing the error and the repetition of the collective yell, this time of "Chick-en-bur-ger!", Mr Sukam was enjoying his meal.
Those who work on the other side of the counter voiced a common complaint that could also explain some of the faltering productivity. For the most part, they are bored. "It's not busy, sir," said a South Asian server in his mid-20s at Morelli's Gelato in the Dubai Mall, nonchalantly stroking piles of ice cream with the spatula he would use to scoop it if he had customers. Standing around the two customers sitting in the ice-cream parlour's plastic seats were six other servers who looked equally bored. One, who appeared to be a manager, was watching videos on a laptop computer.
At a coffee house on The Walk in the Jumeirah Beach Residence, Jeff, a waiter and father of two children, sat down with a patron as he served coffee. There were no other customers for the eight waiters on duty, some of whom were staring off into space while others gossiped behind the cash register. "Sir, where you from?" he asked, followed by a succession of questions including "Where you work?" and "You married?"
He had good reason to be inquisitive. It passed the time. He had not helped a customer in more than an hour. "At night, no people. It's too hot in the morning," said the 25-year-old, who said he earned Dh2,000 (US$540) a month. Asked why there were so many waiters for so few customers, he shrugged and asked: "How long you live in Dubai?" @Email:hnaylor@thenational.ae