Global Apathy, TGI Inspiration, or Just Random Utterances

The usually exaggerated and bordering on ridiculous uniforms at TGI Friday's today seem to have become even more absurd, as the dumpy, charmless waitress with a moustache and fluffy pink tea cosy on her head waddles towards me and asks me what I would like to drink. I inform her that I have recently placed my order with her colleague and a confused look washes over her round face as the stares at me for a while, stammering... "But... they told me to ask you what you wanted."

I am not sure how she wants me to reply, as I smile a little awkwardly and tell her again that I have already been taken care of. The matter remains unresolved as she walks away, scratching her head. I can only imagine how uncomfortable that absurd hat with the knee high socks and braces must be in this tropical heat.

I think there must be some kind of a TGI system in place that neither the staff nor the customers are entirely clear on. To begin with, the fact that 90% of the time there are more staff than customers for me, raises the first flag, although I have to confess that this evening, this tacky, bright, loud and arduous place is actually reasonably full.

As far as I can deduce from my few visits here (I am somewhat hostage to TGI Friday's, being the only place within walking distance- although not recommendedly so - and half a ratchet above Pizza Hut) all the staff have varying and separate roles. Some greet, others serve, some stand dreamily starting out the windows and the rest I think are there for show. But it throws this little hierarchy in to confusion if you ask someone who isn't your designated server for something unexpected. I think that was the problem today; the receptionist who led me to my table asked what I would like to drink, thus bypassing a couple of steps in the ladder and getting above her station.

It is curious that this place of excessive loudness, waitresses with florescent uniforms, bright lights, screaming babies, inflated prices and a menu as wide as a phone book with absolutely nothing appealing on it (even the salads are dripping in BBQ sauce or three kinds of cheeses) should be my chosen place of refuge.

A large crowd of staff with dozens of buttons on their braces and tambourines in hand, gather at the table behind me and begin stamping, singing, clapping and rattling their instruments in a deafening, head-splitting racket. I am a little perplexed as I try to deduce their words, assuming that it is a birthday party or something. Yet it is a strange song I don't recognize and I wonder if it is a TGI policy perhaps for when someone orders a certain dish; fajita fever or triple jack burger, or something along these lines.

Groups of happily chattering diners surround me and to my left, a couple with a baby bouncing up and down on the table. I think I am the only person in the world that would go to TGI Friday’s looking for solitude, dining alone; writing.

Yet somewhere within this multi-coloured hyperbole and mayhem of blaring TV screens and 80's music, combined with kids screaming and spontaneous singing outbursts, I find a kind of find peace. It's almost as if in this peculiar place, all the conflicting noises, thoughts and ideas that race through my brain constantly, never allowing me to unwind, spill out here, like a Dali painting.

I observe the painfully slow waitress, as she returns to my table without my order. I have been developing a theory recently, or perhaps just assuming to an existing one; the brain functions something alike the body; if you don't exercise it then it will quickly become out of shape. Running from one meeting to another; one office after the next, all filled with vacuous assistants staring at the wall, at each other, at their nails, or (the ones with half a spark) at facebook, incapable of forming real sentences, or answering a simple question.

This tidal wave of brain deadness is not limited to here by any means; it is a pandemic that seems to run throughout societies and any government run institution in any country in the world. This little joke might upset some of you, but still makes me chuckle - “Question: What do you get if you have 100 lesbians and 100 civil servants in the same room? Answer- 200 people ain’t doin' dick”.

If the most challenging things you read in a day are the instructions to opening a carton of milk and the highest culture you have access to is the telenovela (or in England, the soap opera) I suppose it's only logical that your brain correspondingly, literally slows down to the intellectual pace you are working at. It isn’t just about natural born intelligence, but a cultivated, degenerative decrease in brain wave activity.
"Eso no es normal, eso no es normal" (this isn't normal) stresses Anko, the little muscle in the side of his jaw pulsing in and out as he begins to get agitated at repeating his last name 6 times, or as we wait 45 minutes in reception before it occurs to anyone to inform us that the boss is actually out of the country.

This widespread lack of common sense, intelligence, ignorance, or however you wish to call it is, as I said, certainly not limited to Honduras. In England I have been asked how I liked Africa when I said that I had just come back from Nicaragua, or when talking about Thailand, asked if I had "walked the Inca trail".

I have been served by petulant, po-faced, disinterested shop assistants, busy texting their boyfriends, staring daggers at me for deigning to disturb them to seek assistance. In the Western World it is a whole movement of people blatantly disinterested in what is going on in the world of others around them.

In Honduras, I think, a huge factor is the sweeping divide between the rich and the poor and the low standards of education available. In a country where most have to fight on a daily basis to feed their family, they simply don't have the opportunity to go to, or let their children go, to school. Lilian, the single mother I met on a bus travelling south had to drop out at 13 when she ran away from home from an abusive brother and alcoholic father, to work in a melon plantation. With an average per person of 5 years spent in education and an unemployment rate of almost 30% it’s a constant struggle.

This is a fertile and breathtakingly beautiful land, with coffee, bananas, tobacco, minerals, and tourism destinations - everything the country needs to be progressive and abundant -all in the hands of a few rich and powerful families.

Some of the quotes of the week for me definitely came from our meeting yesterday, as the subject of security problems in Honduras arouse. Waving a Bvlgari adorned wrist, our interviewee disclosed that her family was not "showy" unlike some (and she dropped names) that went everywhere with 5 bodyguards, grotesquely displaying their wealth. She personally had only two (both trained in martial arts and body combat and, of course, fully armed - but just two).

She continued enthusiastically, widening her eyes adding that, as a self proclaimed lefty, "look at all the poverty here; frankly it's just tacky to spend your money in front of these people. At least have the decency to go abroad, to the States or somewhere and spend your money there". I find myself nodding in agreement, as I tend to do during these shallow encounters, and leave scratching my head. Would it not be better off for the country is she were less considerate and at least circulated her wealth on Honduran soil?

On more than one occasional we have heard CEOs of companies proudly declaring that they don't hire any doctors/lawyers/managers who haven't studied abroad and preferably in the United States. It struck me as ironic that the rectors of all 5 of the Universities that we went to, both private and public, waxed lyric for an hour about the quality of higher education in the country, only to purse their lips and frown at the question of whether their children studied there. "Of course not!" was always the answer; their children are educated overseas.

Well I certainly am not in a position to speak about standards of higher education here, or in any country for that matter, and I certainly wouldn't recommend either of the Universities I went to. I can only go by what I see and hear. Carla, a tourism student who works part time as a waitress in one of the places I sometimes go to eat, sent me some of her work to help me with my research. Although the subject matter is solid and the overall article interesting, it is written with the most shockingly bad grammar possible; and graded without correction by University professors. I am not even a native Spanish speaker and yet the errors gaped out at me from the page like the chasms in the highway.

I see the waitress hovering nearby with the bill and realize that I have written a lot. In some deep, dark place inside of me, I secretly like TGI Friday’s. I can snuggle myself away in a corner booth and conduct my own little social experiment.