Singapore Expats

Last week I took my 2 children out to a restaraunt (not sure if I can mention the name..what the hell) It was Blooies, I order one meal for me and a pizza for the kids to share. The kids meal comes...I wait...and I wait.
I know its common practice in most places here where they don't bring the food all out at once so you can all eat together so I wait some more. The kids almost finish I finally get the waitress's attention and ask her where my meal is. She asks me what I ordered , goes to the kitchen and comes back saying I never ordered it. My son turns to me and says, "Mum I heard you order that". It was not a busy time. I get no apology from the waitress. I pay for the pizza and go next door and order a subway.
Today at O'briens irish sandwich shop, Jelita I order a very simple chicken, lettuce any mayo sandwich. I sit and I wait...and wait. I go to the counter and ask where is my sandwich. She shows me a BLT sandwich and asks if its mine. I say no and she blames her co worker for giving my sandwich to the chinese boy sitting with his parents. I ask for my money back as I havn't the time to wait another 10 minutes. Again I get no apology.
Is it not a pre-requisit to have a brain to work in customer service here, or do I have a sign on me saying....I order food, but do not really want it?
Just a couple of little stories I wanted to share with you. I have had a few more incidents where the workers have also been totally clueless....but that would take all week to write about, however I waould be interested to hear of any other stories like mine where you have delt with no brainers.

I think everyone here would have stories to share similar to yours from around the entire world. We all make mistakes and we all make mistakes in our day job too. I usually try and think "thank God you are serving me my sandwich and are not my surgeon or even my electrician or plumber", a missed meal here and there is no big deal to cope with if we have to deal with someone having a bad f=day who wont be doing their job properly

yeah think we've ll had similar things like that happen.

Having learnt from these... shall we say slip-ups, I now make the waiter/waitress read the order back. That way you know what's been ordered or not as the case may be and can correct them if necessary.

The fundamental difference I notice between how things work in restaurants ( except for the more expensive ones here ) in US versus Singapore is that in US the person who takes your order also has responsibility for you until you leave. They bring you your food or if they do not physically bring it, they at least check that you got it. They periodically check if you need anything.. They give you the check/bill, etc..

In Singapore one person takes your order and then they seem to wipe their hands of responsibility for you. Somebody else brings you your food and I still haven't quite figure out who is supposed to give you the check/bill.. You seem to have to just accost somebody And good luck if you want another drink during your meal...

I've expressed my opinion ( which was promptly ignored ) to the manager of Swenson's restaurant recently that it would be great for customer service if they could adopt that philosopy that the waiter/waitress have responsibility for everything to do with table, rather than just the order - taking.

Swenson's is by far the worst.. I've never gotten kids meal without having to ask at least twice...

Anyway just an observation.. That simple change would help customer service, efficiency and would be overall better from customer and restaurant... IMHO ! :-0

Slightly off topic but similar situation in KL.

I was rattling off a list of items we needed to do for a project and the office girl was just there saying yes, ok, ok etc. I asked her how is she going to remember all this? and told her to get a pad and write it down.

So we started again, this time it was yes yes and lots of scribbles, I notice something odd about the way she was writing, and asked to have a look at the pad, it was just a load of wobbly lines. ( not short hand I can recognise that )

I have had the same thing happen to me a few times. More recently in McDonalds when I asked for an Applie Pie and Diet Coke. I paid and only received the coke.

She looked at me as if I was mad and I said I'm waiting for the applie pie and she said, I didn't order one!!

I only ordered 2 items, how on earth can you go wrong with that!! God forbid if I was ordering a meal for a family of 4.

I expect things to not go smoothly often--both here and in the states.

Fast food clerks. . .Retail cashiers. . .any entry-level job is ripe for an adventure.

In the US, I usually chalk it up to indifference or hostility. Here I assume it's a language issue and the culture of not wanting to admit needing clarification.

Annoying for sure, but (unfortunately) not unexpected.