Just within a span of one week, I met two different types service staff at two different restaurants.

 The first, was not very literate, and hence requested for us to "wait awhile for him" while he took down our orders using pen and paper by copying the orders from the menu. He offered us plain water even though our set meals already came with drinks (perhaps this was company's policy). His politeness and willingness to learn made up for his lack of education, and this attitude was something that I admired.

I however felt disgusted at the second. I might be biased, I might be extreme in my views. She may be a good staff on a normal basis who just happened to make a mistake but it ruined my dining experience. She was not very observant and talking to her colleague when my dad and I were requesting to make orders. She took our orders and asked us if we wanted to order drinks (which we declined) only when my dad commented that the meal did not come with drinks. They didn't have veg for the day so we had to make deal with carbs for the side dishes. The meal came. The portion was small, the chicken skin was burnt, like literally black. I was already unhappy with the meal. The infuriating part only came when my dad and I were making payment at the counter and I spotted some leaflets at the counter which featured what my dad and I just ate under the All Day Meals, only that this was cheaper and came with drinks. I showed my dad and we stormed out after making payment and confronting the staff for not even bothering to introduce the offer sets though she hurriedly apologized for it.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not angry that I didn't managed to save like a dollar or so from missing out on the all day meal offer. I was just really angry that the staff didn't bother to introduce it to us when we were making our order, ESPECIALLY when those were the very same items on the menu and they were charging us at a higher price than the set with drinks. Incredulous, lost for words, cheated was totally how I felt then.

To me, customer service means to consider the interests of your customers AT ALL TIMES, no matter how long your day had been or how tired you were, not just being friendly at the door or taking orders dutifully. Those are part of the job scope but, the essence of customer service comes from treating everyone who walks into those doors with the intent and passion that you want to serve them better and you want the best for them, not just a smile for the sake of a smile. Yes, you do want to make money for the company, but in most cases successful companies are only successful because their clients know that they will receive the good and reliable services from them and hence continue to return to employ their services.Similarly, to me restaurants are only successful if 1)Food is really that fantastic that people do not mind paying a higher price for it, 2) Food is good so customers return or customer base increase by word of mouth,  3) Food is so-so but average or above average services redeems the fact that your food is just average... Well, you get the idea. The key is to impress customers (with food, service, environment etc...) to get them coming back for more, which in this case, I'm sorry but you failed miserably, both in terms of food (which was just so-so) and service (which we felt cheated after the meal). If you continue to use such a tactic, you probably wouldn't be seeing most of your customers a second time. Well at least for me, you wouldn't be seeing me for a long time.