Sensitivity
There’s this place in Be’er-Sheva, which is more or less my favourite place every time I’m at the south. Sort of regular: every time I’m around and hungry, I go there.
Last Saturday was no different. We went there after a short strall at the dead sea: Ein-Gedi was full of kids this Saturday, and they noisily bathed in all the pools, scared the mammals away and attracted the birds: it’s amazing what pieces of dry bread can do to the small-brained creatures.
We (I was there with Elina) didn’t make there a long hike, as I was a bit cold (yes, yes, we can officialy declare spring: my seasonal cold is here); so after observing the scenery, the contrast between the sea in the horizon and the desert around, and of course - enjoying the kids and the birds (there is this local bird, named in Hebrew after the famous british traveler Henry Tristram who described it on the 19th century on his travel to the dead sea; it looks like a black craw but with an orange strip under the wing. It is abundant near Masada and Ein-Gedi), we left Ein-Gedi.
We headed to the Glass museum in Arad, that some of you may remember I described in the past; it remained as beautiful as it was. On the way we stopped for a view at the Zohar post. The dead sea was so calm that the deep blue water merged with a perfect reflection of the red mountains from the Jordanian side. Tranquility.
Near Arad the scenery changes abruptly. The desert - naked brown hills crossed by deep canyons, is suddenly covered with yellow carpets of flowers, and the background becomes green low grass. Numerous herds of sheep gaze in the area, and you can actually forget that you are actually in a desert area: the spring is here, too. If not for some occasional camels, we could have thought to be at a completely different area.
We drove through that area (it hosts many Bedouin settlements, and you can see some nice combinations of very basic houses with sattlelite antennas that seem unfit on top of them), and then we stopped for a late lunch at Be’er-Sheva, at this place I like.
There are many reasons I like it: they serve huge dishes, the food is not fancy and is always fresh and good, it is rather cheap, and the service is very good. In fact, like Elina noted, it is too good.
It just struck me, when we saw that the diners at the table next to ours left, and a bunch of 4(!) waiters immediately took over the table and in less then a minute prepared it for the next costumers, and Elina noted that these waiters must suffer from extremely strict rules. She knows a thing or two about managing people (actually, she deals with human resources as a living); and I dine at that place long enough so I should have seen it myself: there must be a price for the good service we get, and it is the waiters who pay it. Since that minute until the end of the lunch I just kept noticing how all the waiters are constantly running, always looking at the costumers, very atentive to what is going on - almost frightened. Of course, nobody notices this. That’s what you call sensitivity.
I still don’t have a conclusion from this restaurant thingy, but it was the first time that I left it troubled. Both because I realized I don’t know the actual conditions thee, and because I didn’t notice it before - and I normally try to pay attention to details. I wander how many other things I miss on similar occasions.
