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Monday, July 17, 2006

Bad Service in F&B outlets



Readers Digest magazine has made it official – Malaysians are the 3rd rudest people in the world. Surprised Malaysians who have been on planet Football these last few days are all in a flap over this news. Me? I’ve been bitching about this for years.

Coming from an F&B background and being ol skool to boot, my pet peeve is poor service. My motto is simple – the money’s in my pocket to spend, and you’re one of thousands of outlets, so why should I patronise you?

Somewhere, somehow, very sinisterly and subtly there has been a paradigm shift. Today if you want service you have to kiss the bartender’s ass. It’s his job to stand there and ignore you. You have to get his attention and beg for another drink, which he will fix when he has the mood and can find the time.

This happens repeatedly in outlet after outlet nowadays. I like to sit at the bar and people watch. Now if you can’t get service at the bar itself, what about the rest of the outlet?

So I sat down and started to analyse this new trend of ignoring customers. I found the root case of the problem. It’s the outlets’ owners who are propogating this horrible and disgusting culture.

There’s this outlet I used to call my favourite. It’s along Asian Heritage Row and positioned to take advantage of the pre and post party crowd from the Loft, Chynna, Maison, Atrium et al. I used to be there every other day and I’d order a bottle of JD.

I was there with the Area Sales Manager from Guinness Anchor one day and we were drinking Heineken at the bar when they ran out of stock of Heineken. I’ve been in the business long enough to know that you can “borrow” stock from your neighbours, particularly if one of your main sponsor’s big wigs is sitting at your bar.

Not this place. The bartender decided to ignore us. We called for a bucket of Heineken. Nothing happened. We again called for a bucket of Heineken. Again nothing happened. I called the Manager. This guy is Indian, and specializes in jamming his humongous coat-attired frame into some dark doorway and “disappearing” the whole night, emerging only at the end of the month to collect his salary.

No action. nothing happened. Furious, I sms-ed the owners. No reply.

That’s when I found out the owner’s wife insisted on employing her cronies to run the place. Qualifications not necessary. Kiss my ass and you have a job. Customer service? Duuuuh, what’s that?

In Bangsar, next to the NST offices you have a brand new outlet that relocated from behind the Bangsar Shopping Complex. It has so much potential to do well. Sadly, It is badly managed. None of the top management team are qualified to run an outlet. Tell the owners that and you get a “but they’re my friends what?”

In Damansara Intan, a Doctor friend has invested a huge amount of money in a “fishy” outlet and again let his experienced friend run the place. This friend uses musicians as his tools. I pay you RM300 to perform live, you call your friends
and pack up the place and earn me RM5000 that night. Brilliant isn’t it? I wonder why nobody else has stumbled on this formula. When it doesn’t work he sacks the musicians.

I could go on and on ad nauseum about this new trend of blatantly ignoring customers, but I think you get the point. Don’t contribute to this malignant disease – walk out if you’re not given the proper respect and service you deserve.

Better still, post a comment here and start a forum if you’ve been badly treated.












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Comments:
Hey Dave, thats why I try and stick to the Clubs-lah!

All these so-called 'happening pubs'all over the Klang Valley, are for attention-seeking yuppies who'd love name-throwing and loud conversations above the riddiculous crap spun-out by some monkey, who goes by the name of something...something DJ on the music console!

And who is laughing all the way to the bank the next morning while you nurse a bleeding head-ache, from all that adultrated spirits and a huge bill..?? That bugger who owns the joint-lah !ha..ha!!!
 
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