service, please!

[An essay on service in Singapore follows. If you'd rather not digest it all, scroll down to the designs below... If I don't know you did so, you won't hurt my feelings. :p]

There is a coffeeshop in AMK, which I like to walk to most Wednesday mornings for a good roti prata breakfast. Usually, what I do is walk over with the latest 8Days, order my prata, teh ping, and sit there contentedly reading my mag while I eat.

The one thing that bugs me about the coffeeshop is the lao uncle and the aunty assistant that go around taking orders for drinks. Half the time, they don't notice that I'm there, despite me waving my 8days frantically in the air. [Oi! Kio zhui ah!] I used to joke with my father, if we went together, that he must've done something to the lao uncle, something so horrendous that now the lao uncle refuses to serve the both of us drinks. And indeed, usually we'll be halfway through our breakfast before someone realises that hey! That table has no drinks!

Makes me wonder if these people are really interested in earning their keep sometimes.

Which is why, today, I felt that I crossed some kind of threshold with the lao uncle. I went there in the morning, as usual, and ordered my prata. After choosing a table, I looked around, and as usual, lao uncle and aunty assistant were nowhere around, so I prepared myself for a long wait.

Who knew, after I read a few pages of my 8days, the lao uncle silently came up to me, plonked my teh ping on the table, and just as silently took the money I had left on the table and left! Before I had even managed to order anything!

Now this is what I call service. :)

Most restaurants in Singapore [and indeed, any other place that employs service staff] get a LOT of flak for providing bad service, and sadly to say, some of this flak is justified. I remember one time in the Edo Sushi branch at Changi Airport, my friend was kept waiting for hours for her dish, [while she forlornly looked at all of us eating] only to be told later that they had run out of the dish she ordered! The waiter made some mumbled apology and we paid and left. Not even a discount given. :p

Another time, at the Country Manna at Suntec City, they totally garbled up our orders, and forgot to serve us anything. [I had a stinking feeling that night that all the waiters were new] We had to remind them 2X before the manager came out and confirmed our order with us again!

And be noted if you ever go to this sidewalk bar in Orchard next to the Thai Embassy. One of the waiters [who doesn't wear specs] there has a terrible memory, because everytime we ordered something through him, he forgot about our order, and we had to re-order through another waiter. Then again, the waitress there suffers from the same memory disorder as well.

It's practically shameful, considering that these are all respectable eating places. We pay these people 10% service charge, and this is the service we get in return. And I'm pretty sure that there are many others out there who have even more horror stories about the service staff.

Are we too picky? Is our bad attitude rubbing off on service staff? Are they underpaid? Are they totally untrained? ( This last could be true )

Well, if the above are true, then how does that explain other places who offer great service? The sales staff at The CD Store, for example, lets you lounge around in a leather sofa while the staff play the CDs you want to listen to through the store speakers. They even let obviously-cannot-buy customers like me and Quet sit in the store and listen on as well. And they're friendly, and always there to fulfil your requests.

But, you may say, they get to work in an airconditioned environment, wear nice clothes, and so the work isn't as tough as in a restaurant, where you have to remember numerous orders, walk in and out of a sweltering kitchen, face bad-tempered diners, and get lousy pay, all the while balancing plates of food on your arms.

Then how do you explain people like the lao uncle, who can recognise regular customers and remember their orders? [let's see Macdonald's try that move] How do you explain this other wanton mee stall in AMK, who recognises my dad on sight, and who will automatically serve him his order the moment he sits down? Or the economical rice stall people at the Bishan Interchange who greet every customer with a hearty greeting and can even recommend what to eat? Surely these people work in much worse conditions than the waiters at, say, Edo Sushi? [either that, or they're a whole lot more nicer to me than to other customers]

I dunno. But I do know that good service is not an impossible thing, if you wish to provide it. That's why the staff at Robinson's are continuously commended for their service. I remember that, while working there, good service ethics were always emphasized again and again to the staff. My old Robinson's colleagues were always helpful and cheery towards the customers, even, in the case of one, in the throes of migraines. Maybe that's what spurred my interest in retail.

In the meantime, we as customers live with what we can. But I daresay, for an 80cent teh ping, that was pretty good service I got. :)