Service culture

Last Monday I flew with Swiss from Singapore to Zurich. After 5 hours I had to stand up and walk around a bit. A flight attendant pushed a cart along the aisle and blocked my way. Oh wait actually it was the other way around, clearly I was blocking its way since the first thing the flight attendant said was “You have to move away!”.

Last Tuesday I arrived in Stuttgart. I called a cab, and the fun started. The driver didn’t expect the Hotel to be so close to the airport. A loud “hrmpf!” and little detour later he dropped me off 300m away from the entrance to the Hotel. When I wanted to pay with a 100 EUR note, he started shouting and complained that he was not a bank. A 2 minute rant later he didn’t even want to take my credit card.

On Thursday I was supposed to fly to Hamburg at 18:25. I ended up flying at 22:15. The passengers seemed quite calm, but the ground personnel not only did not answer any questions, but I also heard four of them complaining loudly about how annoying the passengers were. Verkehrte Welt.

Same evening, same airport, in one of the restaurants. The tables in the restaurant were not even half full, but we had to wait for 20 minutes for them to take our order, and the same amount of time to get the food. No “sorry for letting you wait”, just “you have to leave soon we are closing in 15 minutes”.

 

Yes I arrived in Europe, and I miss Taiwan a bit. (People who have experienced the service culture in Taiwan will understand)

2 responses to “Service culture”

  1. …. totally agree. It is hard to find anywhere in the world with such a great service culture as Taiwan. Great posts you are doing Jih-Ming!

  2. Thanks Henrik! Yeah I think Taiwan is quite unique in that sense. Even in other countries where labor costs are lower than Taiwan, the service is not neccessarily better.

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