Kings of Convenience and the stupid Garlic Restaurant
Thursday was Kings of Convenience day. The Norwegian duo was really great, although Li Lin did doze off barely into the 2nd song… haha… But I like their geek-dance routine. Totally awesome.
The night was slightly marred by an unpleasant dining experience at one of the bayside restaurants at the Esplanade- The Garlic Restaurant.
Everything from the start was bad. The waitress taking our order could barely speak English. And they had to use a PDA to take our orders. Quite a stupid idea really, especially from where I was sitting, the counter was just 3 metres away and I could even see the chefs. Anyway, back to the waitress, she obviously did not know how to use the PDA as she really struggled for the love of God, to key in our measly order of 2 dishes.
Never mind.
Midway through our meal, I signaled to a waiter and said ‘tar-tar sauce’. He gave me a knowing nod and smile and 20s later, he emerged with no tar-tar sauce but chocolate pudding…
Never mind.
And before I could finish my meal, the waiter came up to give me the bill, at 10.30pm, citing closing the register as the reason for early billing. They didn’t even ask us if we wanted to make any last orders in the first place.
Never mind.
Then came the mother of all fuck-ups. The waiter returned to our table with the little Visa file. The price was correct. But the card wasn’t.
It turned out that the waiter mixed up the bills. My bill was $30 odd dollars. But he charged another bill (which was $163) into my card.
Huge elephantine screw-up.
Instead of telling us what was going on, they disappeared behind the counter for half an hour, leaving us bewildered and nothing to do.
After their long conference behind the counter, their “best solution for everyone” was for the guy at the other table to pay me the price differential since the counter was closed (ie. Account was closed as well.)
Was that the best they could come up with?
You have 2 table of disgruntled diners here, who will probably never ever step foot into your restaurant again. Shouldn’t you do something to appease us? Even a lousy dining voucher would have helped a little.
Anyway, it did make me realize something… If I ever do set up a restaurant, rather than finding the best chefs, I will look for the best service staff instead.
Especially in a more high-classed restaurant where better service standards are expected, the front-line staff is the restaurant’s representation of its image and brand.
Good food has no bloody use when the staff pisses everybody off.
***
On a footnote, this incident also highlighted the frailties of credit cards. I’m constantly disturbed by the fact that the loss of your credit cards or the mere knowledge by other people of the numbers on your card can lead to fraudulent activities.
It makes no sense that ATM cards are more secured than credit cards.
For online transactions, rather than having numbers at the back of the credit card, wouldn’t it be better to key in pin numbers as extra security? The current system of keying the number on the back of the credit card is really as dumb as having your ATM card’s pin numbers imprinted on the back right?
As for face-to-face transactions, perhaps you can have photos printed on the card. The Sunday Times’ coverage on signature authorization a few months back really showed the ineffectiveness of signature verifications. It is considerably difficult and taxing on the cashiers. Photo verification, on the other hand, would be much easier wouldn’t it? Especially since credit cards are usually valid for 3 years, your physical appearance shouldn’t deviate too much.
This idea isn’t foolproof. But I think it’s a much better deterrence.
