Taxi drivers discovered new (?) methods of stealing from their clients and an incredibly rude waiter…

My brother and our client took a taxi from Dorobanti square in Bucharest and headed to Ateneul Roman, this wonderful building created at the same dimensions as the ancient Erectheion in Athens.

When they got in the car, they noticed that the taxi-meter’s screen was not visible. After a “short but intensive discussion” with the taxi driver, they noticed that it had not started from the base price, but it was already at 29,70 lei. When they reached Ateneul Roman, they paid him 10 lei and asked for a receipt. The inventive driver did not press the button on the taxi-meter, in order to stop charging and extract the receipt. He wrote one and he left them, with the taxi-meter always on and charging, searching for the next “potential victim”, ideally foreigner.

(Taxi drivers create problems in all the countries of the world, but I had not encountered this technique so far in Romania)

Last night in a “high class” restaurant in the Old Center of Bucharest…

A friend of mine with his 2 clients are having dinner. The food is acceptable, the prices high and the service “indifferent”. The waiter comes for the food order, he does not keep notes (do they think it’s a sign of intelligence?) and he delivers the plates making 2 mistakes. Of course he did not apologize and blamed the clients, but it was not a tragedy and they did not press the matter.

When the moment of the bill came, my friend paid and left a 5% tip. But this was not ok for the gentleman. The restaurant informs its clients that “ the services are not included” (so if you don’t do something about it, do you have to go to the kitchen by yourself and pick up your dish?).

The waiter (in front of my friend’s clients) took the tip money out of the leather “wallet” used for paying bills and showed it to him: “This is not enough, it should be 10% or nothing. I cannot show the cook a smaller amount, he will make me pay the rest from my pocket. Better leave nothing”.

So, not only you have to pay a lot to eat here, but if you don’t give the right tip, the waiter can humiliate you without any problem. Then when the restaurant closes down, everyone complains and comes up with all kinds of excuses, but no one looks in the mirror and remembers his mistakes…