NQR

I’ve written about it before, but there’s a term to describe the experience in the Middle East compared to living in America: Not Quite Right. In other words, “Close, but no cigar.” Friends of ours joked about it before we ever moved overseas with examples of ordering pizza and it arriving with corn kernels as a surprise topping (yes, really) or being in a store and wanting to buy something, but the cashier is unable to sell it to you because it doesn’t have a price tag on it. Even if there is another item (but broken) with tags, they can’t take the price of the same item and apply it to the thing that you want to buy. Been there at the Sultan Center in Oman with a table that I wanted and had to walk away from because they couldn’t/wouldn’t take my money . . . so NQR.

Sometimes it seems that things are almost normal, especially here in Abu Dhabi, but the NQR lurks right under the surface. Today Josh and I went to IKEA to grab the most minimal of things (adhering to our spending only on essentials challenge) to pick up sheets for the boys’ beds that would hopefully fit. (Spoiler alert: they do, butI like my fitted sheets to be *tight* and these fit, but are baggy, even though they are supposedly the right size. Oh well. #overit). Anyway, we also needed a curtain rod to hang our Qum (carpet art for the wall) so we found a basic black one and got out of there before the need for MORE STUFF hit.

When we got to the car I realized the curtain rod hadn’t made it into our bag so I went back to the register to get it. The cashier said, “Oh, it’s your curtain rod! You need to pay this man for it since he paid for it already” (pointing to another customer). Say what now? The cashier had missed it on our order and put it on the transaction behind us. Normal people would expect the store to refund him and charge me, but at IKEA, an international, major company, they wanted to avoid the paperwork and just have me hand over cash to a stranger and walk off with my curtain rod. That is NQR in action.

It probably would have been fine, but I wasn’t having any of that today. I’ve used up all of my “roll with it” energy for the month, or maybe even for the year. I said, “No, I’m not paying him anything. I’ll pay you.” And all was fine and I went home with my curtain rod while poor customer was still waiting for his refund and Josh and I laughed at the things here that are crazy, but masquerade as normal.