Sigh. I haven’t been blogging consistently. If a busy girl like Miho can, I should be able too! Some more all her posts got photo one.
After a very zho boh day at work, I caught Happy Feet with Kenny, Rus and Iris at J8. For some reason, Rus was wearing pink too. Maybe Monday's pink-shirt-day huh? Well, I couldn't resist such a photo opportunity so I asked Iris to snap the 2 of us (while he's actually on the phone).
Despite Kenny & Rus' late arrival, dinner at the food court was quick. With time to spare, we shopped around for Kenny's hair dye (but in the end, he decided that he shouldn't waste the money) and Iris' facial wash before adjourning to Häagen-Dazs. Did you know that Häagen-Dazs is actually an American company which was set up in New York in 1961? Who the fuck told me it was from Denmark or some European country? Basket. See the following, taken from Wikipedia.
"Contrary to common belief, the name is not European; it is simply two made-up words meant to look European to American eyes. This is known in the marketing industry as foreign branding (see also Heavy metal umlaut). Mattus included an outline of Denmark on early labels to reinforce the Scandinavian theme. (Ironically, although Häagen-Dazs operates in 54 countries around the world, none of the company's 700 stores is in any Scandinavian country.) Mattus was, however, a European immigrant to the US, originally coming from Poland.
The playful spelling devices in the name invoke the spelling systems used in several European countries. "ä" (an Umlaut) is used in the spelling of German, Finnish, Slovak and Swedish language, doubled vowel letters spell long vowels in Finnish, Dutch, and occasionally German; and zs corresponds to /ʒ/ (as in vision) in Hungarian. None of these spelling conventions is used in pronouncing the name of the American product, which has a short a, hard g, and a final s sound. The closest real name to the fake Häagen is the Danish or Norwegian Haagen or Hågen; Dazs is a possible word in Hungarian due to the "zs" grapheme, but does not resemble any real name."
Anyway, they had this new flavour and gave them out in tiny cups that were so small and cute that (once again) I have to take a photo of them.
We all know how good it is to have a store that is well-staffed. But there's a line between well-staffed and over-staffed. J8's Häagen-Dazs is over-staffed. For a ice-cream joint of that size, I'd reckon 6 staff should be just nice. But no. That branch had at least 8 staff working that night and the place wasn't even half-occupied. As a result, the serving was slow and the service was very inefficient. What made it worse was the fact that the staff aren't the least disciplined. They were chatting over the ice-cream bar while serving a customer. Gosh! Where's the professionalism?
Imagine this:
Scene 1 (inside casino)
It's 2am. Sharp looking dealer, Ah Huat shuffling cards. His colleague, Ho-Say walks by.
Ho-Say: Xiao lian eh, I is going to tah bao supper. Ai jiat mai?
Ah Huat (Deals cards): You go where tah bao?
Ho-Say: The nearby prata shop loh.
Ah Huat (While thinking, hands at waist): K k. Like dat help me tah bao 1 bomb 1 plaster. Kopi we can take from pantry.
Ho-Say: Hahaha. Ok ok.
Can you imagine how puzzled and irritated the clients might feel? Sigh. And I thought customer service in Aussieland is worse.
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