You know how some companies just reply out of courtesy and doesn’t do follow-up?
I’m surprised when Orchard Hotel’s Senior Director of Catering and Events contacted me via this blog! It’s awesome when companies take the trouble to contact people who complained gave feedback. Ok I’m not sure if it works the same way if the feedback was given “secretly” via their feedback form since I never really trusted the “trusty” feedback forms. But it’s good to know that they take my feedback seriously and bother to contact me to provide me updates on my feedback, even though I’m not any big-shot blogger who has high hit-count on this blog. They could have just cast the feedback aside.
So I’ve been informed that they have held a meeting to discuss about putting new action plans in place, hoping to improve on the challenges faced by the operations team. Yes I’m appalled by that. Though we cannot expect a total change in service level overnight, every small step taken is a step towards better service. Kudos to the team for that!
If I ever have to attend another wedding dinner at Orchard Hotel again, I am looking forward to seeing better service. Manpower crunch in the industry is a norm now, but I’m pretty sure there are workarounds for that. 🙂
Oh yes, I have to clarify that the complain post wasn’t targeted at any specific person. 所谓对事不对人. I am not unhappy about any particular staff, but unhappy with the overall experience I had. You know some companies will penalize their staff based on feedback (or maybe I have watched too much drama). I have stressed that to the Senior Director, and have been assured that it won’t happen. After-all, bad service is not the 1 person’s fault, but the company’s fault for not providing adequate training right?
At the end of the day, they are answerable to the wedding couple who paid for their service and not me.
It might have been due to the (previous) job hazard, that I take service provided by the F&B / Tourism industry seriously – think Singapore Experience Award.
The last time I was at Orchard Hotel was 11 years ago, thus I had no past experience to compare against. But with the many events I’ve attended in the past years, this must be the most unpleasant one I encountered.
Was at Orchard Hotel last night to attend a wedding dinner. Never did I expect it to be such a bad experience.
Chipped plate
First was this chipped decorative plate I noticed the moment I was seated. While I agree that it is not possible to notice all of such chips if it’s one of its kind, this is not the only chipped plate at the table I was seated at. At least 2 other plates suffered the same fate, one of which had a bigger chip. 30% of the plates were chipped, how difficult is it not to notice them?
My table was seated before the door was officially opened for all guests to be seated. The next thing I knew, was the decorative flowers on the tables being removed BEFORE the door was opened. I thought it was weird, because decoratives are there to beautify / bring up the atmosphere when the guests arrive right? In all the dinners that I’ve attended, such decoratives were removed only when there were at least 40% of the guests seated at the table or when the banquet is about to start. But to be removed prior to the arrival of guests is just.. weird.
When guests arrived, the staff should start serving drinks right? No that didn’t happen. So we waited a while, thinking they are busy (which I think they were since they kept running around). Finally ordered our drinks after we’re seated for a good 10mins. And the drinks took another 5mins to arrive. We had a kid at the table, so we requested for kids’ cutlery and a glass of warm water for the kid. 5 minutes. 10 minutes. Didn’t come. So we tried again with another waiter. 5 mins it still didn’t come. What’s wrong huh? It came only after we requested with a 3rd waiter. And FYI, the door still hasn’t opened at this point of time.
It’s normal behavior for guests to take a glimpse at the menu right? This was what the next table saw.
Dinner Menu
But.. my friends’ names aren’t Elvis & Wendy! I almost thought I went to the wrong banquet. These belonged to the couple next door! How bad can it get? I can make do with the above boo-boos, but this is a big no-no. How can such mistakes be made?
So the dinner started. Service till the 4th/5th dish was pretty much ok – I’ve lowered my expectations from those boo-boos. Plates were changed after every dish (well almost). Then the next hiccup had to occur. All the changed plates were still wet – which was ok, might be fresh out from the dish washer. But the plate wasn’t clean! If I were a demanding customer, I’d have flared by now.
Dessert was sago with mango puree. The waiter was distributing into the individual bowls, while some of us talked about desserts in HK – like how SG’s cannot be compared at all. Suddenly I heard the ladle knocked onto the big bowl and the waiter went off. Maybe he was done scooping but this was what we saw.
Look at the state of the bowls and the table.
Look at the state of the bowls and the table. The individual bowls weren’t even half filled. Big bowl was still full. Table was.. unsightly. What? What happened?
The dessert wasn’t fantastic by the way.
If the banquet manager saw this post, I can expect the following response from them:
– not enough staff as there was another wedding banquet next door
– service staff are new
– not easy to get part-timers
To be in this industry, service is important. I’m pretty sure the hotel did not receive this banquet request only the day before. It is the hotel’s responsibility to ensure that service is of a certain quality – especially when Orchard Hotel is managed by the Millenium Hotels Group. Where’s the standard? I see none at all.
Pretty sad with this experience, and I know for sure I will not be back again. Nor will I recommend this to anyone who is planning to hold a wedding.
With the recent forest-burning happening on our neighbour’s land, Singapore is now tainted with a haze so bad it kept breaking the PSI record within the week.
While we grumble (yes I’m one of them too..) that the government has not done anything to solve this “crisis” (or whatever that is termed by the civilians), and while I do not agree with what has been said / done, I think we must still give credit when it is due.
The stocks for the N95 mask ran out the moment the PSI level shot up to 400 few days ago. Some stock arrived today at the various pharmacies, and at last update, Cold Storage at Great World City has it too!
The haze cleared a little today, going as low as PSI 73. Despite that, the PM2.5 level is still high.
PM2.5 should be what we should be more concerned about. The PSI level tells you how hazy it is (though it might not be accurate at the point of your reading as it is a 3hr average of several readings) or simply put – how bad the smell of the air is. PM2.5 is the level of micro-particles (of which includes harmful ones) that exist in the (bad) air that we breathe in.
If you are unable to get your hands on a N95 mask (which is the best mask in the market that has the best filter), that doesn’t give you an excuse not to wear a mask ya? Putting on a surgical mask works just as well, with it being able to filter out 80% of the particles compared to the 95% provided by the N95 mask. In short, put your mask on!
In the meanwhile, do keep yourselves hydrated. Keep eye drops & facial spray easily available and use them whenever you feel irritation in the eyes / skin!
Let’s all be ninjas till the haze gets cleared permanently. 🙂
2 weeks into the new job now. Having worked in the private sector all these while, it’s a steep learning curve for the many protocols that I do not understand have to learn.
I’m not a headstrong person. If you explain the rationale why things are being done this way, I can easily understand and get on with the flow easily. But there are certain things that I have my own stand – some of which I have shared with close friends and they couldn’t understand either. I will give in eventually – that I know for sure. For that is the only way I can get things done. Just trying my luck on how long I can endure with this one protocol.
Nevertheless, it had been a good 2 weeks. Minusing the sleeping early and waking up early – and that’s a 10pm-6am timing, I think I am handling it pretty well so far. Thankfully all tuition classes were on hold these 2 weeks, as the students were having their school exams. I’m sure the 10-6 timing will soon be considered a luxury once classes resume next week.
Somehow I do think (for now at least!) I am born to be an educator. I feel happy when one of the students, from the relief classes I taught at the tuition centre, could recognize me when I popped by this afternoon. 😀 I love it when I am around students. I love it more when I was told that their grades actually improved. <3
Which made me drop the decision to stop all tuition. My students gave me strength to carry on. No I’m not kidding, they really do! Especially those who are willing to learn and keep asking questions about topics that they do not understand. I’m glad I made that slight difference to them 🙂
This post started off with the intention of updates on work, but I got distracted when I touched on the topic of tuition. Oops..
My new workdesk is an aspiring North Pole. So cold I had to wrap myself up like a ba4-zhang3 (dumpling).
Day 1 at work, the table was in a clean state.At week 2, this is what it became:
Those A3 papers you see, were what I used to block the aircon duct above the desk. And that white divider to block the aircon coming from the duct in the centre of the room.
I have a plan to take a snapshot of the desk weekly, until 30 shots have been taken. And create a mini timelapse video to see how it evolves.. XD
As a general reminder to myself, I can handle the coldness at this aircon setting:
You might have known, I’ve been learning Korean for a few years now.
First started with Basic Korean at Bt Panjang CC. The trainer was a native Korean, but the syllabus was too fast for a beginner (I had zero knowledge on Korean alphabets at that point of time). Although I attended every lesson and did all the homework, with the usual-favouritism on students who are more outspoken, the trainer taught very fast, assuming everyone were as knowledgeable as the girl who could interact with the trainer in Korean.
I gave up attending class after the 8th lesson.
A year later, Fen asked if I was keen to attend Korean class with her. Of course I said yes! So we started classes at Bt Batok CC this time round, under the trainer Jang In Suk (the founder of Jang KC Centre). I love her style, she was patient enough and made sure everyone understood what she taught. There was no favouritism (yay!) and everyone progressed at the same pace. It helped that I had Fen & Pat attending the class together.
Just as there this phase along the line of “nothing goes smoothly as planned”, I had to stop attending classes when I got posted to work in Hong Kong in 2011. By then, I’d already completed Intermediate-2.
A year in HKG, I attempted to self-study but time didn’t really allow me to do that.
When I came back to SIN, I attempted to go back to Bt Batok CC under Mdm Jang, but my busy schedule (on top of laziness) caused me to miss almost 70% of classes. And you might have guessed it right – I had no khakis to attend class with! It’s a waste on money I know.. Didn’t help that I’d registered myself for the Advanced-1 class when I retook Intermediate-2 class. I didn’t go for the Advanced-1 classes in the end, forfeiting the course fees (thankfully it wasn’t that expensive!).
Should I say Lady Luck was shining? Javin (one of my classmates from secondary school) texted me for advice on Korean language schools, saying that he wants to learn Korean too. After many weeks of discussion, we concluded that we will attend class together! Having shortlisted a few language schools, we decided on Sejong Korean Language School which is located at Tanjong Pagar – pretty central considering where we work.
I’ll be learning Korean from Basic-1 again. New school, new environment, new syllabus – it’s easier to start from beginning than to feel lost in class. Helps that I have a new partner to practise with! That should be enough motivation not to skip class now.
Recently, I’ve started to “like” more pages on facebook that talks about random stuff. Some of which are actually quite interesting.
Science of Madness, from its name, talks about anything that is science related. So there was such a post:
A psychologist walked around a room while teaching stress management to an audience. As she raised a glass of water, everyone expected they’d be asked the “half empty or half full” question. Instead, with a smile on her face, she inquired: “How heavy is this glass of water?”
Answers called out ranged from 8 oz. to 20 oz.
She replied, “The absolute weight doesn’t matter. It depends on how long I hold it. If I hold it for a minute, it’s not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I’ll have an ache in my arm. If I hold it for a day, my arm will feel numb and paralyzed. In each case, the weight of the glass doesn’t change, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes.” She continued, “The stresses and worries in life are like that glass of water. Think about them for a while and nothing happens. Think about them a bit longer and they begin to hurt. And if you think about them all day long, you will feel paralyzed – incapable of doing anything.”
It’s important to remember to let go of your stresses. As early in the evening as you can, put all your burdens down. Don’t carry them through the evening and into the night. Remember to put the glass down!
It serves as a good reminder to many of us.
Quoting work as an example – after a long and shitty day at work, you reach home weary and can’t wait to hit the bed. Wake up the next morning and the cycle repeats. Some might dread going to work – possibly due to stress or whatever not. This kind of “burden” as I name it, is something that we can learn to deal with (the pot calling the kettle black, I know..).
The kind of stress we have – not just at the workplace, it can be a “grouch” that we hold against anything in our daily lives – are sometimes the root causes of our unhappiness. The longer we hold them, the more tired / unhappy we become.
Stress, don’t take it too hard on yourself. Learn to deal with it in a positive manner, it will give you pretty (and sometimes unexpected) results.
Grudges, they come and go. There will be too many of them for you to remember every single one of them. Take them as lessons learnt. The experiences gained will be valuable in your decision making should the same thing happen again.
