Foodcourt encounter!

Something inexplicable happened to Lydia and I this week. We went to this foodcourt along the 3 ½ mile of Jalan Cheras. This foodcourt has been around for some time, around 8 years. Its inconspicuous and kind of hidden from view from the mainroad. The people who eat there are mostly regulars or know where to find it. I used to be a regular there years ago when it was still new but now it’s a bit rundown.

They hire a lot of foreigners to serve foods and drinks, and some of the foodstalls even have foreigners running them. I had just fetched Lydia from work at around 8pm and we were heading home. We decided to have dinner nearby as it looked as if it was going to rain. So I pulled over to this foodcourt off the mainroad as I remembered they used to serve good food back when it first opened.

We sat down outside and while deciding what to eat, the waitress came and asked what we would like to drink. We asked for Chinese herbal tea but the waitress who served us didn’t understand Cantonese very well so she called her colleague over to ask us what we wanted to have. We repeated ourselves and she rushed to the drinks station to get us our drinks. We were too busy chatting with each other that we didn’t really notice anyone around us, let alone the waitresses, lottery and dvd sellers.

When the drinks came I asked the waitress how much it was, she said RM2.00. I pulled out RM10 from my pocket as I only had RM10 and a RM1 inside. She gestured that it was too big a note that she had to get it changed at the counter, so off she went. When my food arrived I didn’t have any change to pay for it, so I told the Indonesian or Thai waitress to wait till the drinks waitress to bring back my change.

After a long while, we realized that the drinks waitress had not returned, so I went to the counter to ask if the waitress had forgotten the change for my table, #18. The cashier gave me a blank look and the drinks supervisor came and asked me what’s wrong. I told her what was wrong and she asked me, “Did u remember how the girl looked like?” At this section of the foodcourt we got 4 people waiting tables including me. She was a local Chinese lady while the other 3 are thai nationals. I said “I’m sorry I didn’t notice” and she said “Then I’m sorry I couldn’t help u”. I was thinking whether it was a ploy to cheat unsuspecting customers of money and if it was, the method was really sleazy and unethical. But yet again, would u expect a foodcourt operator to be ethical and clean?

So I went back to my place and Lydia asked me “How did it go?” I said “Not too well, they asked me if I could remember the waitress’s face. I couldn’t, Lydia couldn’t too because we were to engrossed in chatting with each other. The hawker we ordered food from was still waiting for her change and I went over there and I said, “Nevermind I will pay you first” remembering I had another 3 pieces of RM50 note in my wallet.

I opened my wallet and there it was, tucked neatly inside was 1 piece of RM5 and 4 pieces of RM1 including the RM1 I already had in my wallet, together with the 3 pieces of RM50 I had inside. I asked Lydia, “did u see the waitress return me the change?” she said, “She left with your RM10 and didn’t even come back!” I was like, erm…. So I went and asked all the waitresses who delivered our drinks but none of them admitted to even doing it. What a weird encounter at this local foodcourt! Spooky!

If you guys wanna know where this foodcourt is, its along the 3 ½ mile of Jalan Cheras, opposite Brunsfield’s City View Condo where there is a Perodua showroom. The foodcourt is called Payathin (Pat-yeh-theen in Cantonese), the same row as a furniture shop and a Nissan showroom.