While customer service is a pretty important aspect of the Food and Beverage (F&B) industry, it’s pretty safe to say that most customers don’t expect restaurant staff to be absolute saints most of the time.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that customers will put up with disastrous or straight-up rude service.
Unfortunately, a diner from Malaysia encountered service from the staff of a restaurant that one might even feel is worse than just “rude”.
Here’s what happened.
Man Called Restaurant Out for Not Providing Free Water
On 18 June, Facebook user Alex Hooi took to the social media platform to air his grievances regarding an unpleasant experience he had at a restaurant on the previous day.
The restaurant in question? Pizzeria Dihyang, a restaurant located in Kuala Lumpur.
Hooi started his post by writing, “God forbid if you should fall sick at Pizzeria Dihyang, they would probably charge you for medical service.
“In my years of dining around the world, I dare say this is the first time I experienced the most shocking excuse of a customer service ever.”
Vomited at Restaurant
According to Hooi, he started to feel nauseous after he finished his dinner at the restaurant on 17 June.
He then got up to vomit his entire meal in the restaurant’s toilet.
“To be fair, it’s unlikely Dihyang’s food cleanliness issue, they are pretty hygienic as far as I could tell. Never at any point throughout the dinner though did I blamed Dihyang about it,” he clarified.
Hooi then proceeded to try and “clean up the toilet and washing up myself as best as [he] could” before approaching a service staff to let the staff know what had happened.
After that, he asked the staff member for a glass of warm water for him to clear his throat.
Staff Refused Request for Warm Water
However, instead of being given the glass of water that he had asked for, Hooi’s request was refused instead.
According to Hooi, the waitress told him “without skipping a beat” that the restaurant did not serve warm water.
Instead, she told him that he could choose to purchase a 1L bottle of still water at RM23.50 (approximately S$7.50) if he wanted to have water.
“I said I don’t need so much, just a bit to clear my burning throat. They still tried to sell me the bottle of water insisting that they don’t have any source of water aside from the RM23.50 Sole L’itialiania Still”, Hooi explained.
“Visibly annoyed, I went back to my table. Fortunately, my friends had brought their own water bottle and offered me some drinking water to clear up,” Hooi wrote.
Manager Said that He Could Have Used the Tap Water in the Toilet
Hooi then went on to recount that he told the manager about the incident after he paid for the bill as a form of feedback.
He explained his intention of doing so, writing, “Explaining that if your customer isn’t feeling well and literally just threw up the entire dinner, you shouldn’t try upselling them! Perhaps ask on their welfare, how are they feeling, offer a glass of water, hoping it’s not the food that had caused it.”
He also noted that neither the service staff nor the manager ask if he was “alright” at any point in time during the incident.
Hooi then requested to the manager that the pizzeria “could have provided boiled tap water in this kind of situation”.
And instead of understanding or accepting the feedback, the manager replied his inquiries by saying, “Sir, if you needed tap water to clear your throat, we have tap water in the toilet”.
Condemned Customer Service from Pizzeria as Compared to Italy Restaurants
Hooi concluded his post by saying that even though the restaurant “may be Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana certified from Italy” and that the restaurant’s pizza might come from Napoli, the restaurant is severely lacking in terms of customer srevice.
“Your hospitality is far from the La Fagmilia culture that I’ve come to experience at other Italian restaurants,” Hooi noted.
“Even if you have left your every strand of your humanity overseas, there’s still Malaysian Hospitality. Don’t expect much though, they might charge you for it.”
Response from Restaurant on Instagram
Hooi also shared an Instagram story on his Instagram account to detail his experience and speak about the poor service that he received.
In response to his Instagram story, the resaurant reposted his story onto their own Instagram story and wrote, “Another story maker. Thank you for coming and ciao ciao”.
Manager’s Response
After Hooi’s Facebook post was uploaded, another Facebook user by the name of Elayne Hoo also wrote a Facebook post in Chinese about her frustrations towards some customers.
Hoo is the manager of the restaurant.
She wrote that she has encountered nice customers, but that she has also met her share of unreasonable customers too.
Hoo then expressed that she does not understand how some customers are unable to understand that every industry and place has its own set of rules, and that many customers that she has dealt with lately are trying to test her limits.
She then said that she feels like telling those unreasonable customers “GO F YOURSELF B” loudly whenever she encounters them.
Hoo ended her post by recounting some of the “unreasonable” customers she has had to deal with, writing that her restaurant does not have tap water to begin with as well.
Hooi included screenshots of Hoo’s Facebook post in his own posts as well, while it seems like the manager has either deleted her post or changed its privacy settings.
Netizens’ Reactions
After Hoo’s post was uploaded, many netizens criticised the restaurant’s poor customer service and the manager’s attitude on social media.
Some also shared their own experience with the pizzeria, with one commenter writing, “Well, didn’t like their pizza last I went.. didn’t expect their arrogance is a different level.”
“Saw one of their google review saying they refused to provide hot water for a mum to heat up milk or food for the baby,” another user shared before saying, “Have some flexibility and compassion please.”
Currently, the pizzeria has a 1.7-star rating out of five stars on Facebook.
“That’s so pathetic, for guest service, horrendous behavior from all staff. I’m appalled, you were treated so bad, as i’ve been a waitress/bartender. worked in the travel/tourism/hospitality field for 30 yrs. This is disgusting,” one netizen commented.
Other netizens also made joking comments at the restaurant’s expense, with one Facebook user writing jokingly, “Don’t complain. They might charge you for their complain hotline.”
There was also a Facebook user who pointed out how he “might say [that Hooi was] asking [for too] much” if the service charge at the restaurant was worth RM6, but the service charge, which was 10%, amounted to almost RM60 (approximately S$19).
Join our Telegram channel for more entertaining and informative articles at https://t.me/goodyfeedsg or download the Goody Feed app here: https://goodyfeed.com/app/
Hooi also shared in the comments section that the restaurant does not serve filtered water at all, which caught the attention of some netizens who questioned the cleanliness of the restaurant’s food ingredients.
“Honestly, it’s scary if they don’t have filtered water. That means they’re washing their vegetables in…. tap water?
“I mean I own a cafe and our prices don’t come close to touching theirs and we wash our vegetables in triple filtered water,” one commenter explained.
Facebook users have also left comments of disapproval on posts of the pizzeria’s official Facebook page.
“That is not a nice thing to do to your customer…Have some compassion,” one Facebook user wrote, while another said, “Nobody wants to go to this inhumane place.”
One netizen also mentioned how the pizzeria’s manager dug her own grave as someone working in an F&B business with her Facebook post.
Other netizens left more light-hearted comments to criticise the establishment, with many asking how much tap water will cost at the restaurant and if they serve customers water from the toilet.
Read Also:
- Indonesia Building a Housing Estate Modelled After S’pore With ERP, Merlion & an Orchard Road
- S’porean Jailed 10 Years for Buying IDs on the Dark Web & Impersonating 2 People
- China National Tried to Bribe Police with $100 for Drink-Driving; Claimed It Was to ‘Pay the Fine’
- Woman Killed in AMK Accident Was Hit by Several Vehicles & Was Dragged a Distance
- 10 New Facts About NDP 2022, Whereby the Parade Commander is an NSman
Featured Image: Facebook (Alex Hooi)
Over in TikTok, there’s a drama involving property agents that’s caused by us. Here’s what happened:
Read Also:
- Singles Can Now Buy BTO Flats From All Locations
- Popular Zi Char Closing Down on 29 Dec As There’s No One to Take Over
- LTA Confirms That Electric Riding Suitcase Must Be Registered With LTA Before They Can Be Used
- Weird Ads With No Context & Brand Appear in MRT Stations
- Xiaohongshu Post Lists S’pore’s School Uniform As Top 10 in Asia, But There’s Something Very Wrong
- You Can Have 300GB of Local Data & 2GB of Roaming Data for Less Than $19 Per Month
Advertisements