Random Ramblings

I have always been the sort of person, who would try everything once. It has paid off handsomely, mostly.

But at times like this, I wish I wasn’t so adventurous.

BZ and I decided to catch up over dinner mainly because she was dying to see my new spanking hair. I had to go down to Vivo to run some errands and I wanted to see water… Yes, water; I know am lacking at least a couple of screws. So off to Vivo I went. While walking around trying to find some place to tantalised our tastes buds, BZ saw The Mussel Guys; which is where our problems start. The menu looked inviting so we were trying to get the attention of a server. But while we were standing at the door, a couple was there and looking at the menu a staff had given to them and the said staff was just standing there looking at the couple. We obviously had decided and wanted a table, but he did not really seem to notice us. When we finally managed to get someone’s attention and asked if we could sit outside, he just looked at us and said “I’m not sure if there are seats outside” and made no attempt to do anything after his statement.

Yes, I know it was definitely a warning bell, but my friend was nicer than me and said so absolutely sweetly “Can you please help us check?” I wanted the seafood pasta that was on the menu, tho I didn’t want it in a tomato based sauce so I asked if it could be switched, with no malice whatsoever. I was willing to take something else if they couldn’t do it. But because of the server, I was almost insistent on getting it. I just couldn’t believe that the server said the following line – “I can put in the request, but I can’t guarantee that it will be cream when it comes out.” I was just dumbfounded. How do you say something like that to customers?!?

In the end, I waited forever for my pasta to come out – and my friend was almost done with hers. When she had a few bites left off her dish, mine came out but it was in a tomato sauce, so I had to send it back. Even while waiting, both of us had already guessed that my pasta would come out wrong. The best part, the cream sauce tasted like they just poured the cream over and added A LOT white wine. It was really horrid. I would have gotten better pasta at Pasta Mania at half the price.

My wonderful friend suddenly had a sweet tooth, so we had issues trying to get a server’s attention to bring us the dessert menu, to take our order, to bring us water. So finally, we were just sitting there awaiting for wonderful brownie with ice cream to arrive. We waited, and waited, and waited a while more. Then we got fed up and questioned a server on our long awaited dessert. He went in and about five minutes later, our brownie was brought out; WITHOUT the ice cream! We were so irritated! I was just so frustrated already, over all the issues before, and it was just getting worse. The server was in some world of his own I think, coz when we said that it was supposed to be a brownie with ice cream, he looked at us blankly! Did he not study his menu! He went in, and came out with a small bowl of ice cream and just handed it to us. What kind of service standard is this?

But all the preceding issues, would pale in comparison to the last problem. As we were eating our brownie with ice cream, suddenly BZ stopped eating and just stared at it. I followed her gaze and she scooped out a strand of hair from the ice cream! The two of us just stared at it in disbelieve and disgust. When we finally managed to get hold of a server, he was just staring at us not sure what he should do. We had to tell him to take it away and that we wanted the bill without the charge of the dessert. We wanted to see if the management would have the initiative to deal with the entire situation. Unfortunately, they didn’t. All they did was to remove the dessert from our bill.

This is probably the worst experience I ever had. At times like this, I worried for the state of our service standards. Coming from the service industry previously, I would have been completely embarrassed to have even provided a service where by I could not even answer my customer’s question, let alone the long, long list of wrong steps that The Mussel Guys made. To add injury to the insult, they chose to do nothing about it. That is seriously bad PR and customer service, compounding of the mistakes with more mistakes. At times like this, I cannot bring myself to defend the industry I feel so passionately about. Tho this is an exception to the rule, it really hits me deep since I had always strived to give my customers the best my restaurant could offer.

From the time I had left their restaurant, I had text nearly my entire list of phone contacts to ensure that they don’t have to go through the same horrendous experience I did.

I am sure that there were definitely more than 20 people that had received my text message, within ten minutes of my leaving the restaurant.

As they always say,
“Give great service, the customer will tell five people.
Give poor service, the customer will tell fifteen.”

Labels: ramblings