GrabFood Customer Ordered 20 Packs of Food & Cancelled Coz It Took About 30 Mins

Never underestimate the things humans will do to enable their laziness.

We hated walking, so we invented scooters. But then we hated having to move these scooters with our own legs, so we invented E-scooters (and look how that turned out).

We got so lazy we couldn’t even find it within ourselves to move our hands in a circular motion, so we invented a self-stirring mug.

And because we found it too laborious to get off our asses and purchase food that we were going to eat seated down while watching Netflix, we created an app that provides food delivery services.

But, as you know, humans are never satisfied.

GrabFood Customer Ordered 20 Packs of Food & Cancelled Coz It Took About 30 Mins

When a hawker, XinYi, received an S$110 order for 20 packets of Tomato Ban Mian at 11pm, she was surprised, to say the least.

XinYi smelled something fishy, and it wasn’t the Fish Ban Mian in her store. So, her fiancé called the customer to confirm the order, and the customer gave his address.

So, it seemed like a legitimate order.

However, despite repeated confirmations with the customer in Woodlands over text, the customer cancelled the order just half an hour later at 11:48 pm.

Why? Because it “took too long”.

But if you ordered 20 packets, it would take at least a minute to prepare one packet, unless Quicksilver was working at the Ban Mian store. And if my calculations are correct *counts on fingers* it would take 20 minutes to make 20 packets. And at least five to ten minutes to deliver the order. 

This means that 30 minutes is an entirely reasonable amount of time for such a large order.

Unfortunately, the customer didn’t think so. To make things worse, it was a cash order, which means XinYi would have to absorb the cost of the ingredients and labour, not to mention the large amount of food wasted.

Two delivery riders cancelled

Frustrated, the hawker took to Facebook to rant about the inconsiderate customer.

In her post, she also complained about the current food ordering and delivery system. She said that two riders had come to her stall but ended up cancelling because they could not cope with such a huge load.

As a result, her fiancé offered to personally deliver the food by driving down to the customer’s location, which was only 3.4km away.

It would have taken him just 7 minutes.

Called for customer patience

The hawker also urged customers to be more patient, as some stalls are understaffed and orders as big as this may be difficult to manage.

You’re probably thinking, “Just complain to GrabFood lah”. But it isn’t that simple. XinYi says that getting a refund from Grab will take time, as she has faced cancellations before.

She also pointed out how strange it is that Singaporeans can spend “several hours” queuing for food establishments like A&W but cannot wait half an hour for their delivery of hawker food.

This is a valid point. Why are we so impatient? If we can queue for several hours for a goddamn Hello Kitty carrier, surely we can exercise some patience and give these poor overworked hawkers a break.

Otherwise, order a McChicken and be happy with it.