What a Dolmas!?

A town I’m ready to leave behind. But the lessons never stop, and the land I’m about to enter is teaching me lessons here.
Turkish restaurant, I order a feta pie, and the stuffed peppers catch my eye. I’d like to know what’s in it, but I hesitate, not sure whether the gentleman in front of the counter will grasp English enough to understand my question. I ask, and he says it’s a dolma.
“Oh, what’s in it?”
He says “It’s a dolma.”
“Yeah, but what’s in it?”
He looks over to his workmate, and he helps out- “It’s a dolma.”
“Yeah-” and I snicker just a little, a bad habit of mine, very rude- “but what’s in it?” -and I try to motion with my hands the inside of the pepper, which probably looks like me doing a bad jazz dance.
They both look over to their other workmate, who looks over to me and says “It’s a stuffed pepper.”
“Yeah, but-” and before I can the woman behind me asks, with infinitely more patience:
“What’s inside the stuffed pepper, sir?”
“It’s meat and rice”
“Oh, ok.” I say, satisfied that I don’t want it, I start to walk away. The woman is the one who politely lets the man out of the conversation by asking what kind of meat it is.
“Is it lamb, beef? And they carry on the rest of the conversation as I amble in my American-ness over to my table.
When I realize what a rush I had been in to get my answer, I feel the men looking at me. All I did was reinforce that they didn’t know English well enough, while showing that I was rushed and callous- traits that are all too common here. When I see it I dislike it, but I do it myself sometimes.
I had better learn a quick lesson all over again if I want to have meaningful experiences and form lasting friendships while traveling.