You Want Samosa? Too Bad, Sa!
When I was thirteen or fourteen, I decided I wanted a PlayStation 3. My dad refused to buy me one, but my uncle made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. He said that if I worked at his sweets shop for the two months of summer break, he would buy me a PS3 and some games in lieu of payment. For teenage me with no commitments, this seemed fantastic!
[Uncle] sold a kind of specialty snack known as a mini-samosa in his shop. They are like samosas but smaller, about 3.5 to 4 cm in size (about 1/2286 of a football field for my American friends). They were sold by weight in sealed packs of 250 gms and 500 gms as these were the most common amounts people bought.
Making those packages turned out to be my job. At some point after [Uncle] started his business, he realized that 250 gms was roughly the weight of twenty-eight mini-samosas and thus fifty-six were 500 gms. So, instead of weighing each packet, I was told to just pack by counting individual items, which was easier and saved time. We also sold them individually for people who wanted larger, smaller, or unusual amounts.
This was also around the time when our government started airing customer awareness PSAs (“Jaago Grahak, Jaago,” for my fellow Indians) — basically, telling customers to beware of fraudulent businesspeople.
One particularly hot afternoon, it was just [Uncle] and me at the shop. In India, frequent powercuts were very common during summers and thus there were no fans or AC running. Both tempers and temperatures were running high at the shop that day.
It was then that the villain of our story made his entry. He was a local resident and a regular. He seemed angry from the onset when he barged into the shop. He took a look at the fans and saw that they weren’t running, and then he angrily picked up a 500-gm pack of samosas.
Customer: “How many samosas are in this thing?”
Me: “That’s 500 gms.”
Customer: “I asked how many, not how much! Again, how many in this?”
I replied immediately since, you know, I had packed them.
Me: “Fifty-six.”
Customer: “How can you be so sure? You didn’t even count! You’re trying to cheat me! I demand that you pack me 500 gms of those individual ones, and don’t you dare cheat me again!”
I looked over at my uncle who was wet with sweat and fanning himself with yesterday’s newspaper. He slowly nodded, and I beamed a huge smile.
Me: “Sure, sir! Whatever you want!”
I took a bag, picked up some samosas, and started putting them on the balance. I kept counting samosas as I put them in until they were a little over 500 gms. Then, I removed the last samosa, and the weight fell below 500. Now, keeping eye contact with the customer, I crushed the samosa and started putting its powdery remains in the bag until it was exactly 500 gms.
But wait, there’s more! The guy apparently didn’t seem to mind powdered samosa but instead asked:
Customer: *Smugly* “So, how many samosas now?”
Me: *Triumphantly* “Forty-eight!”
You see, sometime in the past, my uncle’s old chef had retired, and the new chef made samosas with a little bit more filling in them. They looked the same size on the outside and only weighed a couple of grams more each, and since he made them in bulk and also sold to other shops in the area, the price wasn’t too much of an issue, so [Uncle] let it slide. But those couple of grams added up on mass orders, and that is what this customer found out the hard way.
He looked sheepishly at the pre-packed samosas and then at his own package and asked if he could buy the former instead.
My uncle finally spoke.
Uncle: “No, my nephew made a package specially for you, at your own request, so that is what you have to buy.”
The man silently took his pack, paid, and left. He was a lot more respectful during his subsequent visits.
I was reminded of this story yesterday when my PS3 finally died.