My Tip Helps Pay for the Bill, and I Get Change
A first-person account of a chaotic 60,000-shilling restaurant bill in Nairobi — and the fintech problem hiding inside the tipping confusion.
An Internal Payments Memo
Bamba. Your typical, just-opened "🔥" restaurant that is trying not to burn its novelty too quickly. At least that's what I think when the guard asks my driver where we're going when we hesitantly pull up to a black opaque gate on Amboseli Road with the word "bamba" (small caps, small print). To the fucking restaurant, duh. Maybe it's an exclusivity thing.
Hopefully, it's not that other thing.
Jay, my M_zungu_ friend, queries whether I still live in Kilimani, given how long I've arrived. This is his second consecutive day here. I join him at the end of a large table with twenty-six-odd other people, whose one-half scooches over so that he and we can sit across each other with at least one of my butt-cheeks on Jay's end of the long bench. While that awkwardness is happening, I quickly glance around — five African people, not counting that guard, the staff and myself.
I'm eventually pressured to order a meal — "The food's reeeally good!" apparently. I order a mushroom something-or-the-other. Simultaneously, an unwanted, unfinished lamb pizza-type thingy gets passed down the table on the way to leftovers. I promptly empty my pride and the plate. Even though I'm not driving, I've downed one and a half 254 "Niajes" — on an empty stomach. I'm already having to prop myself up, and I'm not Vegetarian.
"Is this (munch munch) the 'Mezze'?" No one around me knows or wants to acknowledge my foolishness.
That Jay and I have engaged in a half-butt all-nerd conversation with just ourselves, temporarily "stealing" cigarettes and then just taking them from his friend Nina, who is seated to my left, leaves me wondering, this must be how it goes in these settings: You order a "meal", eat half of it while persistently offering it with mixed results to a friend or a stranger, and the last bites have nowhere to go.
Another waitress picks up the table.
Definitely more strangers than friends. A guy I thought was enjoying the quiet company of friends has been waiting to share his diving photos in still underwater caves. After discovering he is an Egyptian Australian-born Red Cross prison education reformer. After asking what he loves to do. After greetings. After he declined my mushroom plate too many times.
The food is delicious, by the way! I leave no crumbs behind — this is Kenya.
Apart from the few prisons out in rural towns with no one to supervise, which devolve into the kind of hell you wouldn't wish on your worst enemies — a common occurrence in the Philippines — we have pretty good prisons. "Pretty good" is 100 guys in a Mombasa cell the size and heat of Ken's sunset-facing office in the afternoon — they take turns sleeping.
Mombasa's diving waters aren't as nice as the cave's.
The bill that signals it is time to dispatch this cacophony of "Oh, shit, I've heard of you" … "Nairobi is so small!" … "Diving!?… Wow, did you use a GoPro?" almost reaches me. It is promptly stopped by a lady who does the hand thing at me: "We've totally got it! Just do the tip!"
Hmmm. Okay, lady…
Ksh 58,7XX! On just White Caps and 'Mezzes'?
Well, we are quite a crowd, and at 500 for a 254 and 950 for the plate that I've convinced myself will sort out tomorrow's hangover, I have only spent circa 1,500. I stoke my pride and patriotism and tip 6,000 — plus ya kutoa. I'm eagerly instructed that the tipping number is "just" below the Till Number on the receipt.
The MPesa message says "Doreen Mureithi" — wow, what a forward, fancy place! I'm such a badass! Doreen's definitely going to give me the best table next time; my name is definitely not anyone else's in this flock.
The newer waitress returns. We'll call her "Worried Face". The faces left at the table are way more perplexed as they confirm: "Did you say we're short Ksh21,000? Are you sure you have the right bill?"
Turns out the bill is actually Ksh60,250, so even I wipe the Smug off my at-least-I-did-more-than-the-first-world-10% face. Doreen is not getting her tip. Not after that lazy, casual dropping of orders without the disrespectful "Do you want me to track your bill separately?" to avoid upsetting these cultured customers and their can't-really-place-his-accent guest.
Worried Face, meanwhile, is suffering the mistrust of bringing what we now think is the correct bill. She is also frantically recollecting the colours of pants, of credit cards, the presence of wedding rings, heights, accurate skin tones, and other vague and totally non-politically-correct descriptions of who potentially got us here. She's pointing at parts of the table and pausing to scratch her artificial dreadlocks.
Also: this wasn't her fucking table!
It's a scramble. Everyone is gasped. Every time I try to pay for my share of the bill, to distance myself from this circus of aristocrats saving face to a restaurant that (i) trusted that they'd overpay anyway given how close, literally, everyone is, or (ii) trusted them for the fact that they've been here every day since New Years, I get a "Don't you DARE PAY! You already paid SO MUCH!"
I want to rebel and chip in for Accounting's sake. But watching this shit show is giving me all the "Fuck you" that I need, lady.
Nina's making a lot of calls, like a lot. It seems she knows more people here than most. "Are you sure…?" … "Could you send…?". I can't recall if she held my shoulder or her waist or the bill the most — but she clearly spares Doreen's and Worried Faces's asses by finally getting it paid after what feels like an hour — I hope she was using WhatsApp or Airtel's desperate bundles.
It makes sense that Nina is the former Head of Growth for that Mabati FMCG company that is raising a Series Eight without product market fit — Hey, I blame that "company" and this recently dead & buried growth-at-all-costs era. She's a finisher! I'd totally join her for cigarette heists at work. After unending apologies and shoulder leans, she sends me one last apology: a Ksh800 refund on my tip.
Uhm, thanks.
Everyone who is sure beyond doubt that they paid their due is leaving maliciously after forwarding their confirmation messages from MPesa — which gobbled the fees from 70% of the total pot. The others are sequentially absconded. "I used 'Card!' Check your POS, please!" As I watch this de-escalation, I also pause to sympathize with Worried Face while Jay and I casually brainstorm the next spot to bake this hangover.
I politely decline a redeeming lift in Nina's Prado as one of her friends calls "SHOTGUN!" She pauses her race to the front seat to hug me. "Great hanging out! I hope we'll see each other soon!"
No, we won't — I don't even know you.
But it's too late to back out. I take the hug. I might have eaten her lamb.
Jay baits me: "Dude, I know you guys are building fintech. I think I've nailed the solution to this … No, I won't tell you."
"I thought you were the open-source-everything guy."
This must be a valuable problem.