The jar that came back

At a weekend market in Muharraq, a woman sells chilli paste she makes at home, in small jars with handwritten labels. One Saturday a customer comes back with last week's jar. The lid did not seal, he says, and by Wednesday the top had gone dark. He is not polite about it.

There are two easy ways to handle him. She can decide he is simply a difficult man with too much free time, tell him it has never happened before, and wait for him to leave. Or she can point him, kindly, to the stall at the end of the row that sells something similar in factory jars. Both are perfectly fair. Nobody is obliged to take on every complaint that walks up to the table.

But if she chooses to listen, he has handed her something valuable. He has told her that a lid is not closing, and that somewhere between her kitchen and his fridge something is going wrong for people who never came back to say so.

It is tempting to treat a complaint as a test to pass: show the jar was fine, find the reason it was his fault, and move on with a clear conscience. That protects her pride. It does nothing for the next jar.

The point of selling him chilli paste was never to be found blameless. It was to put something good in his fridge that stayed good.

A complaint heard properly points to where the problem actually lives. Finding it is the work she signed up for.