junior's toks

I hate plagiarism

Get ready, this is a long post and please read the fine print at the end.....

I hate plagiarism, I think plagiarism is almost equivalent to emotionally 'raping' the orginator. People who plagiarize are losers who are 'wanna-be' but never get there. But instead of admiting of their short coming, they decided to 'cheat' and pretend that they are 'already-there'. Anyway, let me continue my post ....

IT WILL be etched in my memory forever - the day Singaporeans forgot their manners.
For 10 hours two weeks ago, they made me feel like I did not exist unless they wanted me to fetch, carry or serve.

A cheery 'good afternoon' invariably fell on deaf ears. Nevermind that the people I was greeting were often smartly-dressed men or well-groomed women.

Their reactions rarely differed. They either looked right past me or seemed engrossed in fiddling with their mobile phones.

Yes, life as a sales assistant and waiter sucks, to put it bluntly. Why? Because the Singapore customer - regardless of race, language or religion - is invariably surly.

A smile is rare. Eye contact is non-existent. And for the few who say 'thank you', 'please' or 'excuse me', the words are often droned out robot-like, with no smile or eye contact.
Most awful are those who thrust the shoes they like under your nose and utter curtly the size they want under their breath.

But those who demean service staff most are the ones who crook their fingers and beckon you over. What poor breeding, but like they say, the customer is always right.
So I did as beckoned and I got her four pairs of shoes. She liked none of them and strode off without a word.

Her behaviour is typical, say the other sales assistants at the Charles & Keith shoe shop in Wisma Atria.

Of course, I had earlier tried to prove them wrong. Standing at the shop entrance, I greeted each customer with an enthusiastic 'good morning'.

After an hour of being ignored, I gave up.

It was not much better inside the shop. A 20-something woman with a whispery voice was being drowned out by the shop's music and background noise.

So I asked her politely to repeat her shoe size. She did so curtly and with a frown.

After five hours, I totalled the Greet, Smile and Thank (GST) response from customers. The result was dismal. Nine out of 10 customers I greeted ignored me. At least half did not say 'please' or 'thank you'. Even fewer had a warm smile.

I went away with new-found respect for those who serve and sell day after day. Because the work is no walk in the park.

More than 12,000 pairs of shoes were crammed in a stuffy storeroom about the size of the living room in an HDB flat.

Reaching for a box on a top shelf required the skills of an acrobat almost, as I searched for a toehold on a lower shelf and balanced a few shoe boxes in my other hand.

The aisles had room only for one person to walk sideways. At peak times, with four or five sales assistants stepping up and down the shelves, it was not uncommon for boxes to come tumbling down.

I also learnt very quickly to get more than one colour - say black and brown - and two sizes of a shoe, because without fail, the customer is going to say, 'the brown also quite nice, hor'.
For customers with one foot larger than the other, be ready to provide three pairs for every design they want to try on.

After five hours of clambering, kneeling, bending and packing, I found little to smile about as my leg muscles ached.

Waiting at tables was not any easier. I started as a 'runner', serving what people ordered.
Even though Fish & Co in Novena Square was a casual dining restaurant, the attention to detail was mind-boggling to me.

A spoon is placed on the left side of the plate for spaghetti or fettuccine because most customers are right-handed and will use a fork to twirl the pasta.

Pour a customer's drink away from him so that a spill will not splash on him.

Taking orders was traumatic, because there were so many things to remember: The soup of the day, the daily promotion, what each dish contained and how each dish was prepared.

My trainer observed that I looked tense and frowned when I was taking orders. That frown of concentration could easily be mistaken as surliness by customers, she warned.In the dining business, service was also about serving the food on time and having staff who were familiar with the menu and helpful with recommendations.

During my lunch shift, a large group of office workers complained to the manager about the table arrangement. The diners were also unimpressed that the waiter, when serving the food, could not recall their orders.

They complained their glasses of water were not refilled quick enough and that a waiter had not been handpicked to serve them.

Yet, when I went around with my water pitcher on at least two occasions, no one indicated that they needed their more than half-full glasses refilled.

It is a question of perspective, perhaps. While the waiter sees it as half-full, the customer will see it as half-empty.

But these were minor hiccups, said my colleagues for a day.

No one was 'truly nasty', added Ms Rosy Aziz, training executive at Fish & Co, recalling her encounter with a customer from hell.

The Caucasian man had called her a 'schmuck' because his food was late and despite her apology.
The way she saw it, a service job was all about 'swallowing'.

'It's swallowing your pride, it's swallowing injustice when the customer is unreasonable and bullying just because he can. It's about giving good service no matter what,' she said.

Charles & Keith store manager Jasmine Wong had been yelled at and called ugly names by customers because the shoes they bought fell apart after a few days of wear.

'Often, Singaporean customers treat you like servants and don't give you respect. It isn't surprising that nobody wants to be in customer service in Singapore.'

She has had sales assistants who went for toilet breaks on their first day and never came back. Some broke down and cried in the store room.

And the pay hardly compensates for the distress. On average, a sales assistant or a waiter is paid about $1,000 a month.

Good customer service is a two-way street, said Ms Lau Chuen Wei, executive director of Singapore Retailers Association.

She said: 'We expect the service provider to say 'thank you' at the end of a transaction because we, as customers, have contributed to his coffers. But do we say 'thank you' to the service provider because he has helped us gratify our desires, our needs?

okok, I did not write it, I copy it from here http://www.asiaone.com/st/st_20050925_342906.html

Junior

posted by Junior @ 5:36 PM