More astounding entries in the ever-expanding annals of 'Bad service in China'
1) A gorgeous day on Sunday prompted the first visit of the year to the rooftop of the nearby Bell & Drum bar - which has a charming roof-deck overlooking the historic Bell Tower square, and, for the last few years, has regularly run an enticing all-you-can-drink-for-50-kuai from 3pm to 6pm on Sundays. Alas, the administration of this offer has always been fraught with difficulty; the staff, seemingly afraid that they will be blamed if their boss loses too much money on the event, try everything they can think of to try to avoid serving you!! Really. It has produced a number of exasperated confrontations over the years (including, on one memorable occasion, me nearly getting into a fight after going behind the bar to serve myself, and on another, my pugnacious buddy Big Frank getting the owner on the phone to assure them that it really would be OK to give him Bacardi in his rum'n'coke rather than the cheap, crappy, probably fake brand they were trying to fob off on him). And it really is a quite ridiculous attitude: wholesale prices for alcohol are so low in this country that it would be almost impossible for someone to drink 50 kuai's worth inside three hours. And yet still the bar staff drag their heels. I have several times got so infuriated by it that I have given up and boycotted the place for a few months - but I keep on coming back, because it is such a wonderful spot for a drink when the sun is shining.
At first, things had looked more promising yesterday. Business is evidently on the up-and-up...... because they have greatly expanded the staff. They used to run the place with only three people, but now they seem to have one woman permanently behind the bar, 5 or 6 young boys acting as waiters, and the young guy who's been there since the place opened 5 years ago (and the only one who speaks any English at all, though still not much) acting as a sort of supervisor. Yes, a promising sign, you would think. But no. The 'supervisor' was hiding away in a back room, and the 6 'waiters' were hanging out amusing themselves downstairs. Get this: there was no-one on duty upstairs, where 15 or 20 foreigners were whiling away the afternoon, and occasionally hoping to get served a drink. NO-ONE. It really was a bit of an effort to get someone to take an order on the rare occasions when they came upstairs to collect dead glasses. And even when they did that, they would keep you waiting for 10 minutes for the drinks..... or forget to bring them altogether.
And when, in desperation after one particularly long wait, I went downstairs myself to collect the drinks for our table....... they would only give me ONE DRINK...... because they could not remember that I was with two friends and that we'd all paid for the 50 kuai deal!!!!
I sense another 'boycott' is in the offing.
2) I was hanging out with a couple of buddies this evening on the deck in front of The Den, and one of them decided to order a round of whiskies. We chose J&B, because that's usually one of the best-tasting basic brands available here, and the one that is least often faked. The first round was just fine. We decided to order a second, "for the road". Evidently they had opened a new bottle. And that bottle was egregiously FAKE. The wrong colour, disgustingly sweet, and...... well, in a misguided attempt to disguise the fact that it did not taste of whisky, the makers had decided to flavour it with something very pungent indeed. I think it might actually have been perfume of some kind. It fairly reeked of vanilla. We didn't even have to sniff it very closely: we could tell it was 'off' as soon as the glasses were put on the table.
The staff, of course, had not noticed there was any problem. It was difficult to explain to them what the problem was. When we had explained what the problem was (my buddies both speak pretty good Chinese), they didn't seem to get what the problem was. Reluctantly, they exchanged the rogue whiskies...... for another glass of the very same inappropriately scented thing! We sent them back again. Eventually, we got them replaced with a different brand, which was OK. The Den, you see, does have much better service than just about anywhere else in this town! Of course, they carried on serving the vanilla-flavoured crap to anyone who was too drunk to notice......
Ah, China......
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