Following on from my previous post of friendly service workers in Dubai, I wanted to give a bit more specific detail of a positive experience we had here. Regardless of how you are dressed here, it seems that you will always get treated with respect from those working in restaurants and shops. A few weeks ago we went to a very expensive watch shop with my friend and we were dressed pretty casually after brunch. I was in jeans and trainers and he was in shorts and a baseball cap. I’m not too much into watches but my friend is really into them.
He asked to try on some limited edition Hublot watches which were upwards of 150,000 dirhams (about £25,000) for some of them and we were trying these on and taking pictures like true tourists. The shop worker didn’t bat an eyelid as he found more and more watches under the counter for us to try on. One of them was even a solid gold watch and we could try this on with no problems. If this was in England they probably wouldn’t even let us into the shop, or if they did they would be very skeptical about letting us take pictures let alone try any on.
Although I’ve never been into watches, I found the whole experience to be a lot of fun, even though we were only trying them on for around 15-20 minutes. This is something I would not think about doing in the UK at all, but next time I think I might try going to an expensive watch shop to see if I can get the same sort of service while dressed in my everyday clothes (I doubt it!). After visiting the first watch seller, we then went to another watch shop which sold Omega watches and I think we have found our next ones… time to get saving!
