Much can be said about the Pinoy’s patience for bad service. We’ve gotten so used to being ignored by rude waitstaff and apathetic sales attendants that we’ve learned to shrug them off and have charged it to usual customer service here in the Philippines. It’s unfortunate that when a customer asks for service, we, the paying people are considered demanding.
This is what happened to me and my friends at Cafe 80′s at theOrtigas Home Depot. First my friend called the place to ask for directions and was taken aback by the level of professionalism (or lack thereof) of the person who answered her call.
My Friend (MF): Hi, is this Cafe 80′s, 80′s Cafe?
Cafe 80s: Yah! Yah! Yah! (said like she was irritated with the call)
MF: Ah, tanong ko lang po sana, yung direction on how to get there?
Cafe 80s: Ha?!
MF: Ah, I’ll be coming from EDSA, ask ko lang kung saan side yan in Ortigas?
Cafe 80s: Ah, teka bigay kita sa husband ko kasi mas alam nya….
MF: Hmmm…(thinking if she mistakenly called the owner’s house…)
My friend gave the phone to her driver so she can’t say how the husband was.
Maybe we’ve worked in corporate for too long already but is that the right way to answer a call? At the very least, shouldn’t the owner know where their place is??
Next, someone took our pictures without consent. Someone just came to our table and just took pictures. We had to ask what the pics were for. The camera guy, who turned out to be one of the owners maintains a facebook account and posts pictures of the cafe’s customers. Was it too much to ask if it would be ok to take our pictures? We are not paid endorsers of the restaurant and as such we have the right to know why and for what purpose the pictures would be used. If the intention was to capture candid shots of their customers the least the owners could have done was to ask the group beforehand that he’d be taking pictures of them during the night. Getting the verbal agreement and the waiver actually grants them free reign to take as many pictures and to use the images in whatever way they want.
Aside from these bumps, the evening went as planned and Saturday night was going great. The food was ok, the ambience and music were cliche’d but hey the 80′s is nothing if not campy. That is until we started ordering drinks. And their Bailey’s came with something a little bit extra…a cockroach!
My friend had a few sips already before she noticed the critter. The drink was returned to the waiter. The manager was nearby and heard the reason why the drink had to be brought back. We were waiting for someone to go to our table to explain what happened and maybe offer an apology but instead, my friend got a new drink. We did not get any explanation nor any reassurance of the incident.What if that roach was already inside that same Bailey’s bottle or was crawling in the glasses used to serve the drink? What if that same roach was crawling around the ice the cafe was using to serve their other drinks? At the very least, this is a serious case of food mishandling.
We wanted to know the side of the management, but they chose to be silent. They did not offer an explanation nor an apology. What they gave was an excuse. They told us that the beer bottles were clean so the only contamination was in our friend’s drink. They also offered a discount. We were not asking for a free meal, we were perfectly fine with paying what we ordered. We wanted an apology, a concept which the owners did not grasp that night.
My friend opted to just pay the bill so that we could go. She wanted to use her credit card for the audit trail and for proof of our transaction. What happened next was the owners explaining to us that they have a new system in place and that their wireless credit card terminal is slow so that our bill would take longer than usual to process. We just had to ask if they were still in soft opening (they were open since the fourth quarter of 2008) and why did they not have a manual record of the orders per table? Does this mean that every table who asks for the bill would have to wait for at least 30 more minutes before they get to pay? And were they actually blaming their provider (BDO) for their slow process?
Everything was settled in the end but the experience left us wondering why it was so hard for the owners to own up to their mistake. We never heard an apology which was what my friend was really asking for. It was also obvious that they did not have any protocol in handling customer incidents. I hope they don’t have the presumption that a complaining customer is just asking for a discount. Customers go to an establishment ready, willing and able to pay. What any customer is asking for is to get our
money’s worth and that includes
service.
Cafe 80′s
Food Street, Ortigas Home Depot, Julia Vargas Avenue, Pasig
Telephone Numbers: 3915003 / 4927890 / 4927881
Operating Hours: Mon – Sat: 5:00 pm – 5:00 am / Sun: 5:00 pm – 2:00 am
(contact info taken from Cafe 80′s facebook fan page)
**the original post and all the juicy comments can still be found on
our original blog platform (blogspot). If you’re curious, here it is.
http://manilareviews.blogspot.com/2009/06/there-is-no-excuse-for-bad-service.html
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