I love coffee. So I would walk into Cafe Coffee Day outlets in Chandigarh and pick up a coffee, even though the service was sometimes very bad.
But for this chain, it seems that the motto is "Customer is dirt". I mean, imagine that in the hot summer day, the people at CCD actually refuse a glass of water to a customer!
This has happened with me several times. At Cafe Coffee Day at Dharampur (on way to Shimla) we order some snacks and coffee. It is hot, so we ask for water. "Sorry, " we are told. "You can buy a bottle of water for Rs 20."
I wonder what happened to traditional Indian hiospitality when even strangers were offered water. At our house, we ensure that a jar of water is always lying outside so that anyone can quench one’s thrist because of the immense heat. So I am taken aback by the callous attitude of these new coffee joints.
Installing a wter purifier would cost some thousand rupees, but coffee joints like Cafe Coffee Day and Mr Beans probably think that customers are not human enough.
I have stopped going to these coffee houses. For me, it is the good old coffee house at Shimla and Chandigarh. The moment you take a table, a waiter comes and places several glasses of water on the table. Now that’s what I call customer orientation.