Paying for nothing

People in Cairo will pay for a good evening out without much complaint. The food, the view of the river, the waiter who remembers how they take their tea. That money buys something, and they know it.

What they resent is something else, and it is worth separating out. The minimum charge at a café for a table they only wanted for half an hour. The twenty minutes spent trying to catch someone's eye in order to pay. The delivery that has to be confirmed by phone three times. The fee at the end of an online order that does not seem to pay for anything they can name.

None of these is large. What they share is that they buy nothing. A payment on its own does not make people angry. A payment that returns nothing does, and so does time spent that returns nothing. That is the part that feels like a tax, whoever happens to collect it.

When customers drift away, most food brands look at price first. They run an offer, they argue about a few pounds on the menu. Very often the price was never the problem. The customer was happy to pay for the meal and unwilling to keep paying for the waiting, the confirming and the small fees attached to it.

Strip out every cost and there would be nothing left worth coming for. The price is why people come. The toll is why they stop.