Kabatilo Inv. Group - Amman

I visited the Madina Munarwah store on October 5, around 6pm. When we arrived, there were six people working there and no customers. We are American and we wanted to try a special recipe that required spices we hadn't heard of. We love working here in Jordan and love the food. So we wanted to try cooking some ourselves.However we needed a spice that we hadn't heard of before.
We entered the store and stood in front of the spices for around 4 - 5 minutes.We noticed that five of the workers were pouring just-delivered spices into the display boxes. So we had no problem waiting. Then a man came in and walked up next to us, the employee asked the other customer what he wanted, the other customer gave his order and waited while the men cleaned up the spilled spices that had fallen on the floor. We were on the very far left and the man with the broom asked us to move so he could sweep the spices over to the other side of store. We obliged, however, he could have changed his 'route' of cleaning to pass us without having to disturb us. But, again, no problem.
After a while, no one seemed to be interested in asking us what we wanted. Three of them on cell phones and the others, straightening up. Five of them on the customer side of the spice counter and one behind the spices. Although we struggled in Arabic, we politely asked for help, the employee behind the spice counter looked up from his cell phone in a manner that made us feel as though he was not happy to help. We asked him for this special spice and he said, he'd never heard of it and then back to his cell phone. We then asked him if he could tell us what some of the mixed spices he had at the counter were, he mumbled something in Arabic and walked away. Puzzled, we tried to figure out what the spices were ourselves. Visibly frustrated, we asked another employee for help. He walked around behind the counter and told us what the spices were that we were interested in and then walked to the end of the spice counter and began visiting with the other employees. At this point, we were really becoming frustrated. We demanded to be helped and this made them very angry. He took our order, then sarcastically put the spices in the bag and then ground up the spices. We did not want them ground, but he grounded them anyway. We accepted the new spice powder in bags because at this point, we just wanted to get out of the store.
We then walked to the cashier, who happened to be the first young man that (didn't want to) helped us. Again, texting on his phone. I put the bags of spices on the counter next to the register, took out my money and held the money in plain view. All this time, he hadn't looked up once. Another employee came to the check-out, put a bag on the counter and said it was for the man waiting behind me. The cashier looked up, took the OTHER customer's bag of spices and checked him out. I this point I really felt that it was personal. I asked the employee why he helped someone before me. I was clearly ready to cash out when he helped someone else. There was no need to help the other customer before me. The cashier became very angry and said that he was sick of people complaining about getting helped first and do I want to buy the spices or not. Without another word, I paid and left the store. As I was walking out of the store, I heard another customer behind me scold the cashier that he should help the people in the order that they wait in line.
I will never ever go back to Kabatilo and I recommend that if you need spices, go downtown...the people that work in the spice shops there are HAPPY to help you.

But...
If you MUST go to Kabatilo...don't expect ANY kind of service...that is not the place.
Jordan is a lovely country and the people here are more than hospitable, generous, and friendly...except at Kabatilo.