Recently I had a very unpleasant dining experience at the Indonesian restaurant Rice Table at Orchard. The price is not cheap (around S$30/head for dinner) and I have a lot of reservations for its food and service quality.
I went there with 10 other friends for dinner. Two of us ordered warm water because we had throat problems, while the others ordered juice or soft drinks. When we asked for refill of the warm water, the waiter told us its their restaurant's policy not to serve plain water, and serving us the warm water was a 'mistake' apparently made by another waiter, but they said mineral water is for sale at $2 per bottle. After arguing to and fro with the waiter and his manager, we were going nowhere. Fuming, we talked among ourselves of not patronizing this place anymore. Then after like 10 minutes, the same manager came with a jug of warm water, apologized for 'the mistake', and sheepishly refilled the glasses. Why didn't they just refill the glasses swiftly until damages were done by pissing off so many potential customers?
I always don't understand what these people are thinking. They just want to squeeze $2 more from the customers? I feel serving plain water is a basic courtesy from an eatery. Just like you have chairs for customers to sit, despite the fact you can still eat while standing.
I highly not recommending places that charge for plain water and chairs.
3 comments:
The fact that you wanted to save 2 bucks may be the same reason they wanted to make the 2 bucks from you.
:-) reflective thinking.
Actually you need to consider their position also. There must be a lot of people who shopping in Orchard and went to this place and order something cheap and keep asking plain water.
Also need to consider that the rental at Orchard is super expensive. If a customer just holding a table and keep asking free plain water, it is bad for their business also.
Lastly, like many other business in SG they are still not very flexible. As your table have order a lot of food already, they shouldn't have problem serving you with plain water, yet they are not flexible enough to do that. That why the manager come to apologized.
Snail: Yes, your analysis makes sense, what I don't like is they were not flexible and not consistent. If you served the first glass of warm water, then you should continue to do so.
Lim: There are a lot of places that serve free water. I am concerned about my $2 :P
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