You know, one thing that has puzzled me for the longest time is how mamaks handle their receipts. If they don’t stick it in a cup or fold it up, they always hand it to you face down. And one of the first things you normally do is flip it the right way up to see how much the restaurant is going to extort you for that piece of fried chicken. This isn’t a rare occurrence or something strange that happened once in my life. It happens all the time.
I can’t think of any reason why they would want to put the receipt face down. It’s not like it’s going to make the meal any cheaper. The numbers don’t change. Are they aware of the exorbitant prices they wrote down that they’re too ashamed to hand you the bill face up? And that by the time you finish turning the piece of paper around, they would have already walked away?
I’m not complaining about the prices – after all I chose to go to that mamak in the first place. So why hide the price? No other restaurants seem to do this. Hell, you’d be hard pressed to get a bill in the first place if you eat in a Chinese restaurant that wasn’t serving “tai chow”.