This post was written by Marybeth Ramey

Marybeth Ramey, a multiple award-winning writer, has served on US and local university faculties teaching Political Science, History, and the Humanities. With over 12 years with The Expat Group, she now serves as its Consultant Director. She welcomes any feedback, even if it’s contentious! my view …

“Feedback is always welcomed,” my colleague Anne Perera earnestly insisted to me as I was detailing my recent travails at a government hospital in KL. Her absolute certainty just struck me as funny, although as I explore below, I believe she is right. I had lapsed into angry and self-righteous detail telling her that, although it had taken me just 10 minutes to see the very busy doctor who called me in exactly one minute after I arrived, it took 45 excruciating minutes to pay. My impatience was admirably suppressed during 44 of those minutes, but inevitably my American persona broke through, causing me to make an extremely loud observation, in my chilliest former teacher’s voice, to the hundreds of local eardrums in the huge room.

“One would think that a government hospital would have provisions in place for an older, disabled person,” I imperviously decreed as I tried very hard not to snatch my change and bite the face off of the slowest and least motivated employee there must be in all of Malaysia, who finally handed it to me. declaration of war, I turned and wheeled my tall and bulky walker over a few dozen feet as I limped with Western dignity intact out of the door. I asked our wonderful and patient Anne if she thought, after 12 years of mycomplaining, if she thought I whinedtoo much. Anne is our Manager ofMembership, has been with TEG even longer than me, and is my go-to person Deciding to make my departure match my

when I need to vent. To give you some idea of just how wonderful and patient she is, I finally transferred my infamous son, Naim, then age 20, from being my PA to being hers. Heh… but he sorely tried my patience and my sanity was seriously being threatened. Anne’s is still intact, hence proof of her sainthood. She will listen to all the gory details with patience, understanding, compassion, and best of all, will agree with me! I have asked her in the past if she ever felt like suggesting that I just go back to the USA if everything here was so irritating. She always says no, that my concerns are also shared by most locals, too.

“It is just that most Malaysians don’t speak up and say what is really on their minds,” she will tell me. “They shrug and let it go although they will go and complain to their family and friends later. You say what people already think and we like it. We understand what good customer service is and also want government workers (or who ever I am railing against) to do a much better job and to really care about their work.”

If the issue is not too politically, religiously or socially sensitive, I will then decide if it is important enough for other expats to wallow in shared irritation with me and write about it for this column. I believe Anne is right about locals agreeing with my verbal assaults on various and sundry industry sector workers over the years. Why? Because much of my email feedback is from Malaysians agreeing with me. Their letters are pretty formulaic in that they all apologise first for the behaviour, then suggest alternatives to pursue and then heartily agree with me. They will close with thanking me for trying to set “things straight.”

Over the years I have written scores of columns about inflexible bank staff who, even knowing me for many years will not issue an important item instead making painfully crippled ol’ (not old) me go back and get some kind of specific ID. I’ve written about the seemingly impossible grasping of the concept of punctuality more than a few times. Indeed, I was, as usual, a few minutes early to my hospital appointment and stressed all the way over there that I might be one second late; my Yankee roots forbid me from making people wait on me. And my taxi columns get an unanimous thumbs-up no matter how detailed my descriptions of the awfulness is. I’ve had kind Malaysians email me contact details on their own private taxi cab drivers who are “normal.”

I’ve actually had a month chock full of column topics for some reason… perhaps because I am more mobile now and am getting out more. However one huge, dreadful issue is very close to home, literally, right next door to me, and deserving of its own independent column. In the 11 years our website has been active, including its four forum boards, no topic has ever topped the number of posts that this one has and it leads by twenty-fold over the next highest. I give you, Construction Chaos. Sadly, I lack the space here but I assure you can look forward to what is most likely my strongest column yet, coming in the February issue.

Back to the hospital staff. The only thing bright spot I can come up with is that no part of the building was under construction; otherwise, I would surely have been greatly tempted to just leave and yell back to the clerks as I stomped out the door: “Just bill me, lah!!”

———————————————————————————————————

Source: The Expat January 2013

Read more:

• Renting a Car in Langkawi
• How To Be Successful in 2013
• The Expat Wine Dinner at Pietro Ristorante Italiano

Have thoughts or comments on this article? Let us know by posting your comments below