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Wednesday, March 16, 2005

On Service People

The other day, when we were at Alley bar, we talked about service people. There I was, complaining about stupid customers, K complained about her passengers as well as her father's and then S being a non-service personnel, had nothing interesting to say. Instead, she told us this interesting story.

This story was told from S's friend's cousin, to S's friend and then to S. We do not really know the authenticity of this story, but I believe if you are the said customer in question, you'd really pray that this story is faux.

To make things easier, let's call S's friend's cousin C.

C was waiting at tables in this certain restaurant some time back. One fine day, a customer asked for a glass of water from C. C then brought in the water and the customer exclaimed, "I want hot water!". I think customer must have spoken in mandarin, something like, "我要烧水!". So being "烧水", C literally brought "烧水", which is piping hot water to the customer. Which is a bit stupid on C's part I think, but to his credit, he never knew what the customer is going to do with the water.

Anyway, talking about hot water, allow me to digress a bit. The other day I was serving a "mad" customer, she was asking for water to drink her medicine. She reminded me to bring her warm water because previously, when she asked, she claimed that the person stupidly brought her piping hot water, and she exclaimed, "Dear, did you expect me to wait til midnight for the water to cool before I can eat my medicine?" It was ridiculous because water definitely doesn't take til midnight to cool. I'm beginning to suspect if she's the same customer in question.

Back from digression, as I was saying, C brought piping hot water to the customer. Customer then said, "No! So hot how to drink?! I want warm water!", being "我要温水!". You see, by this point, C was already getting frustrated. "Why this customer so troublesome wan??"

Kindly note that the following might affect your appetite, or cause you to have second thoughts whenever you step into a restaurant in future. The authencity of this story still cannot be verified. But we had done our due verification through, "Eeyuuur, are you sure anot?", "Are you exaggerating?" and more "Eeeyuuuur...." S had confirmed this is what her friend had confirmed with C. On whether C is a habitual liar or braggart, we really do not know.

As I was saying, C got frustrated and you know what he did?????

He went to the toilet, used the glass and scoop up a glass full of water from.....THE TOILET BOWL!

The horror!!!!

"Eeeeyuuuuuuuuuurrrr!!"

He brought it to the customer, and surprisingly, the customer was very pleased with it.

"Yes, this is what I wanted!"

The good news is, C is no longer waiting at tables anymore. But you can never be too sure if he had passed the skills on to somebody who is capable of doing much more "Thou-shall-not-imagine" acts. So always treat your service people nicely.

The bad news? You might be the customer in question.

I think C is bad.
I think I shall have second thoughts when asking for warm water in restaurants.
I think I treated the service guy in Alley bar quite well that day. We even had free finger food.
I don't think I had anything "extra" in my martinis.
I hope not.

Let's look at some random "I-think-are-artistic" photos taken at The Esplanade & Alley Bar.