By Dr Rahim Said
It is astonishing how a faded photograph can ambush an old man. Someone recently posted a picture of GAMA Supermarket at Simpang Enam in Penang.
To most people, it was merely another nostalgic glimpse of a retail landmark. To me, it was an unexpected boarding pass back to a time when supermarkets were exciting, traffic jams were accepted as part of civilisation, and nasi kandar had not yet become a luxury item requiring a mini-bank loan.
Back then, Simpang Enam was Penang’s commercial heartbeat. The roads were permanently clogged, motorists displayed all the patience of caged tigers, and the air was permanently scented with curry, spices and ambition.
GAMA stood proudly in the middle of it all.
Unlike today’s shopping malls that try to convince you they are lifestyle destinations, GAMA was refreshingly honest. It sold things you actually needed. If you left without buying something, it was because you genuinely didn’t need it — not because the marketing department had failed.
My connection with GAMA, however, had very little to do with shopping. I was invited there as a customer service consultant to train its retail assistants. Easy assignment, I thought.
I had my notes. My slides. My examples. Years of experience. Within 10 minutes, I realised I knew absolutely nothing.
The young assistants looked at me with the kind of politeness usually reserved for visitors from another planet. They smiled generously after every sentence, not because they understood me, but because Penang people are too well-mannered to embarrass a guest.
English? No. Bahasa Malaysia? Not much better.
At that precise moment, I learnt one of the greatest truths about Penang. The official languages are for official occasions.
The real language is Hokkien.
Fortunately, salvation arrived in the form of a charming young instructor from Universiti Sains Malaysia. She became my simultaneous interpreter. I spoke in English. She translated effortlessly into Penang Hokkien.
Instantly, the room came alive. The trainees laughed at the right places. They asked intelligent questions. They even challenged some of my ideas.
I was suddenly transformed from a boring consultant into what appeared to be a rather brilliant trainer. Naturally, all the credit belonged to my interpreter.
That was probably the first and only time in my career I realised my success depended entirely on somebody else’s vocabulary. The experience also taught me something no management textbook ever mentioned.
Communication has very little to do with language. It has everything to do with understanding.
Today, organisations spend fortunes hiring consultants to improve communication. They produce glossy manuals, mission statements, value propositions and customer charters that nobody reads except the committee that approved them.
Meanwhile, the old shopkeeper who speaks three broken languages somehow manages to keep customers returning for thirty years. There is a lesson there. The world has become obsessed with speaking. Very few people bother listening.
Ironically, artificial intelligence now translates hundreds of languages in seconds. We can communicate instantly with someone on the other side of the planet. Yet families sitting around the same dining table hardly speak to one another.
Technology has solved translation. It has not solved the understanding.
Looking again at that old photograph of GAMA, I realised I wasn’t really missing the supermarket. I was missing an era when retail assistants smiled because they meant it, not because a consultant had instructed them to maintain eye contact for five seconds.
I was missing Penang before every plate of nasi kandar became an Instagram event. Most of all, I was missing a time when common sense was more common than PowerPoint presentations.
Somewhere in the crowd at Simpang Enam, there was probably a young salesman who couldn’t understand a word of my English.
But thanks to a USM instructor and the universal language of Penang Hokkien, he understood exactly what mattered.
Treat the customer well. Everything else is merely translation. Perhaps the management gurus should have known that all along.
Then again, if they did, consultants like me would probably have been out of a job!
WE