It’s 7 in the morning and I’m sitting at one of many neighborhood 7-11’s in Cebu City. It’s like I’m back in Taiwan. But not really. In fact, being at a 7-11 tends to heighten some local characteristics, as I can compare it to the 7-11s in Taiwan. As you can probably guess, in every comparison, the Filipino version comes up short.

My biggest complaint (as I begin my latest rant), is the slowness of the staff. They move so slowly it drives me to distraction. In Taiwan, if you saw one person in line ahead of you, you’d be relieved. You’d be served and out the door in seconds. But here, even one customer transaction can take forever. Many times, I’ve turned around and left because there was one person ahead of me in line. I get so frustrated with the slow pace, and then I start to feel embarrassed about my purchase. It’s one thing to pop into a 7-11 and grab a cold drink. But to invest ten or twenty minutes in that purchase is ridiculous. In the past, I’ve had to stand in line long enough for the cold drink I wanted to purchase to become warm by the time I got to the counter.

This slowness is everywhere in the Philippines, not just in customer service, and I assume it is related to the low minimum wage. People are paid very little, so little in fact that businesses can afford to hire lots of people. Having so many people standing around introduces an air of lethargy and just “hanging out.” They do work just to look busy, and you know how that goes. The slowest person alive is the guy that just pushes a mop around a floor, not because the floor is dirty but because he needs to look like he is working.

As I said, it drives me crazy to come into a 7-11. I want to jump behind the counter and show them how a normal person would do whatever it is they are doing. Just pick up the pace. There are fifteen people in line! But the number of people in line produces no sense of urgency. The times I’ve waited in these long lines, I amuse myself by heaving huge annoyed sighs and looking up at the security camera and making annoyed faces – in the forlorn hope that someone, somewhere will see the frustration in my face and initiate a nation-wide “let’s hurry the f… up” program. The worst thing is that many businesses offer discounts to senior citizens. But to get this discount you must present an ID. Worse, numbers and info from that ID must be written down on a form. It takes FOREVER. I think my blood pressure goes up five points whenever I see the person ahead of me in line reach into their pocket and produce that ID card.

Then there is the lack of change. Stores – even the 7-11s – never have change. My assumption is that I pay a premium when I go to a 7-11, and for that premium, I should get some professionalism. I’ve been to this 7-11 many times, and I’ve witnessed the constant struggle with change. I don’t know how this situation lasts for one day let alone for months and years without someone fixing the situation. I’m sure it is an effort to start each day with sufficient amounts of change, but it is not impossible. McDonald’s is the one business in the Philippines that has mastered this seemingly impossible task. And if McDonald’s can do it, surely 7-11 can. Again, I can feel my blood pressure rise by five points when I see the 7-11 clerk open the cash drawer and look down into it dumbly. Now will ensue a five- or ten-minute delay as change is somehow scrounged for this customer. This often involves working with other customers in the line to somehow put together enough change. And this is treated like a big success. But that is only the first customer in the line. What about the next and the next and next? What about me?

That last is a good question. What about me? I actually make it my business to make sure that I have enough change. I’ve been using the ATM to withdraw cash, and these machines only provide 1,000-peso notes. These are impossible to change. So I spend the time to find a bank that will give me small bills for all of my 1,000-peso bills. Then, as I shop, I’m careful to hit big businesses with the biggest bills I have and I hoard the small bills for the small stores. So when I got to a big grocery store, and I see that their tills are full, I use big bills. Same for department stores. It’s a lot of work, but it’s worth it to me in that it saves so much frustration as I try to buy a banana or a cup of coffee.

There are many other frustrations in my 7-11 life. My main purchase is coffee. I wake up very early every day, and I like to find a place to sit and drink coffee. That, however, is very difficult in the Philippines. People do wake up early. I’m sure at 6:00 a.m., downtown Sarnia or Toronto is deserted and empty. But it’s different here. The streets are bustling as early as 6:00 a.m. I’m always surprised to find so many people already awake, even on a Sunday morning. (Actually, especially on a Sunday morning. Maybe they all go to early mass?) But despite the number of people on the streets, few businesses are open. When it comes to food, my only choices are fast food – the local Jollibee or McDonald’s. It’s either that or nothing. And for coffee, the only possible place is a 7-11 in a big city.

I’m lucky in that the 7-11 in my neighborhood is extremely large. It’s large enough to have about 15 small tables with benches. Most 7-11s don’t have any seating. There is even an upstairs seating area. That, unfortunately, is always closed. I have no idea why. And that drives me crazy. The tables down here are very low and rickety and only have benches. The tables upstairs are bigger and have actual chairs. I keep asking if I can sit up there, but they always have the stairs blocked off with a sign saying that it is closed for cleaning. They must be talking about a chemical spill of mammoth proportions because after months, they still haven’t finished cleaning. There are two tables on the main floor that are near a big air conditioning tower. I always try to sit there because I can move the bench close to the tower and use it as a back rest. Without a back rest, I can’t sit for very long. This morning, one of those tables – the best one – was occupied. This good one just happens to sit far enough in one direction to avoid the blistering sun coming through the floor to ceiling windows. The bench on the other side, though it provides a back rest, edges into the sun and it becomes unbearably hot. So this morning, I asked again if I could sit upstairs. I knew it was closed, but the sign was gone from the stairs, and someone was up there cleaning. So I thought I’d take a chance. Sometimes they break the rules to make a foreigner happy. So I asked, but they told me it was closed. I wasn’t happy about that, but I can understand it. If it were kept open, Filipinos would turn it into a big social hangout. They can hang out for hours and hours and hours if you give them a place to sit. And who can blame them? For the price of a drink you get a place to sit in air conditioned comfort with your friends. The other 7-11s around the city are generally overrun with students. Every table – if there are tables – is a study group. The same thing for all the McDonald’s.

So, where was I? Oh, yes. Coffee. You get your coffee in 7-11s from a machine and you serve yourself. It is one of those automatic machines that grinds the beans itself and produces just one cup of coffee at a time. It is surprisingly good and always very hot. That is the most important thing. I’ve tried to do my morning sessions in McDonald’s, but that is a far less satisfying experience. Their coffee is never hot enough and is often barely warm. (Don’t get me started on McDonald’s….)

When I first started this, the routine was to go to the coffee machine and push the button and get my coffee, mix in the cream, and then go to the cashier to pay. Then I’d take the coffee to the Internet café (the place I can’t go to anymore because I wrote them a complaint letter). The problem with that was that even early in the morning, the lineup could be so long that my coffee would go cold while I waited to pay for the damn thing. I could drink my coffee in line while it was still hot, but that would defeat the purpose of sitting down and enjoying my coffee. Then I figured out a system. I went to the machine and got an empty paper cup. I took this to the counter and paid for my cup of coffee. Once it was paid for, I’d then go back to the machine and get it. They won’t let local people do this, but they make an exception for the big, scary foreigner. The wrinkle is that, in keeping with local habits, they never stocked the coffee items. Sometimes there would be no cups. Sometimes no lids. Sometimes no stir sticks. Then no cream. Then none of the cardboard rings that let you carry the hot cups. This drove me crazy. I’d have to go to the counter and ask for these items and the transaction would take forever. Day after day after day, I’d be on them about this or that item. And every day, I hoped and hoped that things would change and someone would make it part of their routine to keep the coffee area stocked. This never happened. Instead, they moved all the coffee items away from the coffee machine to the shelf behind the cashier. What a disaster. Now the store clerk has to assemble all these items for every single customer according to their personal instructions – one cream, one sugar; one small with no lid; one medium with a lid. On and on and on. For the clerks, you’d think they were assembling the triggering mechanism for a nuclear device. They were sooo slow and so deliberate. Now every coffee transaction took ten minutes. My solution, as always, is to just take matters into my own hands. Now when I get a cup of coffee, I ask for four packets of cream. I only use two and pocket the other two for next time. I also keep the cup and lid and stir stick. I wash them out in the hotel and take them with me the next time. It’s crazy, but that is the type of thing you have to do. Filipinos would never do anything like that, of course. One of the enduring mysteries of life in the Philippines is how passive the people are. They can put up with an unbelievable level of discomfort and poor service and never react or complain. Wait twenty minutes in line to get a Slurpee? No problem.

I could complain (disguised as social commentary) for another twenty pages, but I’ll move on quickly and just point out things I see around me that make the Filipino 7-11 experience somewhat unique. The first thing is the armed security guard at the door. The dude in uniform with a loaded gun on his hip is a constant of life here. It’s funny that I remember it being a big deal for me when I saw my first armed guards at a store in the Philippines. That was 20-plus years ago on my first trip here. It was so freaky to go up to a department store and see men with hand guns and shotguns searching bags and putting customers through X-ray machines. Now it is an ordinary part of life. I spend a lot of time watching the security guards. I’ve noticed that at least half of their job consists of policing the staff to prevent them from stealing. When employees show up for work, they too have to open their bags and be searched. This is to make sure they don’t have weapons, but also to make sure they don’t have containers they can use to steal from the stores or restaurants. They are searched again when they leave. Security guards at 7-11 also clear tables. I don’t know if this part of their job. I think they do it out of boredom. Why not do something instead of just standing around?

At the table next to me, there is a young couple drinking beer. This is very common here. It’s accepted to sit at the 7-11 and drink alcohol – just like you are at a bar. Young people do it after a long night of dancing at the clubs (I assume). And there are often drunks sitting around and yelling at each other, as drunks are wont to do.

The music is also something that you can’t help but notice. They blast the music as a rule. This morning, they are playing a greatest hits Beatles collection. Not surprisingly, people at many tables are singing along. The karaoke urge in the Philippines is unstoppable. They are helpless in the face of the urge to sing. I always have earbuds in. I listen to podcasts non-stop as I go about my life in the city. And when I turn off the podcast, I keep the earbuds in to deaden the endless horrible sound.

The tables and floors here tend to be a mess. For whatever reason, Filipinos do not have the habit of cleaning up after themselves. In the West, it is part of our DNA to clear our tables. Big businesses have us trained to do that – bring your trays over to the garbage at McDonald’s, etc. The Filipinos do not do that. They even go it one step further and make it their mission to leave behind the biggest mess they can. They enjoy their food and drinks and attack it with gusto and send remnants flying in all directions. There is no attempt to keep things neat, and food spills all over the place and all over the table. It’s crazy how extreme that gets. They sell soft ice cream here at the 7-11. People buy soft ice cream cones and then they will eat the ice cream off the top and then just leave the cone on the table. The cone is still full of ice cream and this simply melts and leaves a sticky mess everywhere. A dozen students will come in after school and when they leave a table, they leave a mess that might require a HASMAT team to clean up. It’s extraordinary. I, of course, always clean up after myself. I’ve noticed that eyes follow me in astonishment as I do so. I try not to make a mess as I eat or drink. Then I assemble all my waste and garbage into one neat package. I’ll wipe down the table with my extra serviettes if I have any. Then I get up, push in my chair or bench and carry my garbage over to the garbage can on my way out. This astonished the Filipinos. They’ve grown up accustomed to the idea that it is the responsibility of the business staff to clean up. And that makes sense in a way. When we go to a restaurant in Canada, we don’t clean up our own tables. The waiters, waitresses, and bus people do that. That’s normal. We do clean up after ourselves in fast food joints and convenience stores, but for the Filipinos eating at a McDonald’s or a convenience store is a bit of a luxury. For them, it is like eating at a restaurant. So they don’t clean up. I’ve noticed in particular that Filipinos never push their chairs in after they get up from a table or computer desk. It’s just not something they do. I’m constantly pushing chairs back in at Internet cafes. And when they get up, they don’t worry at all for anyone behind or beside them. They just push back their chair and if it slams into me (as it always does) so be it.

Another wrinkle to having a coffee at a 7-11 in the Philippines is that you have to deal with beggars. My favorite benches are right beside the windows, and beggars will stand there outside the window and look in and bang on the glass and hold out their hand for money or point at whatever is on the table and ask for it. It is a common practice in the Philippines to give the remains of food to beggars. So if you buy a cold drink and walk down the street with it, beggars will walk with you and wait until you are almost finished. Then the person will hand the cup over to the beggar with the last half inch of drink and ice in it. The same goes for food. It’s a brilliant partnership in a strange way because it means that you don’t have to worry about garbage. There are no public garbage cans anywhere, so if you have take-out food and drinks, you are always stuck with the containers. You solve this problem by saving a little bit of food or drink and then giving the container to a beggar. Now the beggar has to deal with the garbage. Of course, society as a whole loses out in this exchange because a beggar is not going to worry about littering (not that anyone does). The beggar will wolf down the food and drink and then toss the garbage to the ground without a care. The first person might have felt weird about doing that, but it’s easy to hand it to a beggar and let the beggar take care of it. The little street boys are crazy about that stuff. They are really wild and roam the streets like wolf pups. They don’t care about anything. They love to get a glass bottle from people. They drink the last bit of soda and then smash the bottle against the street or throw it high in the air and let it shatter, sending glass everywhere. Sometimes, of course, they keep the bottle for recycling, but they are little boys and they often can’t resist smashing things.

I think that’s about it for my 7-11 thoughts this morning. I had a small victory, by the way. I mentioned that I wrote a letter/note to the people at an Internet café and slid it under the door. I did this on a day when I showed up and found the door locked and chained. This was not unusual because some of the staff just show up whenever they feel like it. They are supposed to open at 8, but they just open whenever they show up. Sometimes, they go inside, lock the door behind them, and literally forget to open up. They just sit inside oblivious to the fact that the door is locked and customers can’t get in. On this particular day, I sat down outside and waited. I had a coffee with me, and I sat there drinking my coffee while I waited for them to show up. I ended up waiting for an hour, and no one came to open the doors. Many, many other customers came and went in this time, all of them wondering what was going on. Finally, I overheard a security guard from the neighboring hotel telling someone that the Internet café would be closed all day. It had been closed the day before, too. This really annoyed me, and I wrote them a note asking them to post their business hours, keep to those hours, and to let their customers know when they were going to be closed for entire days. I said something about respecting their customers. I knew it was a mistake to do this, but I needed to express some annoyance and release the pressure building up inside me. I slid the note under the door, and I’ve not been back since. Yesterday, however, I walked by this Internet café and I saw a piece of paper taped to the door. I crossed the street to read it, and it was a notice to the public that they would be closed the next day (today) for renovations. So there you are. A squeaky wheel (ie, an annoying foreigner) has raised the level of customer service a tiny bit at one business.

Tags: ID, job, music, Philippines Bike Trip 2013, Taiwan