Hygiene and public toilets in Singapore.

The other day, I was returning home, with my family, from an outing. My two eldest sons just happened to want to go to the toilet. Luckily (or perhaps not so luckily) there was one nearby.

I noted the "20 cents" entry fee sign at the entrance to the toilets. Seated there was a quiet man, who was almost not there, so little presence did he have. The coins beside him, on the desk, had more presence.

"Ainan," I began to my eldest son, "Because they are charging 20 cents entry, the toilets will be very dirty.", I predicted.

He didn't understand why I predicted so, but listened, without comment.

I dropped the coins in front of the man, who picked them up, in silence. It seemed that he only saw the coins, and not us.

Ainan and Fintan went into the toilets...and I peeked around the corner to see how they were. Sure enough, the entire toilet area was wet, smelly and dirty...just as predicted.

I made sure they washed their hands when they left.

Now, my question is: why, in Singapore, are the toilets invariably clean and in good condition, when they are free (like in Shopping Centres), but invariably dirty and smelly, when they are not free?

It is bizarre. Whenever I have been asked to pay for admission to a toilet, in Singapore, the toilets are always dirty and uncared for. It is most odd, that the more it costs, the less you get.

I would welcome an explanation from anyone who knows why this is so. It doesn't seem to make any sense. However, it does indicate that whatever money is generated by charging for the toilets is not actually used for maintaining them. Clearly, the owners see them as profit centres of some kind...rather than see their public responsibility to make them civilized places to use.

Is this a problem in other countries? Are free toilets great and paid toilets awful, where you come from? Comments please.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to:http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

Brown Rice Paradise - or is it?

Brown Rice Paradise is an organic food shop in Singapore. Until recently, it was also a shop which my wife frequented in her search for suitable gluten-free foods. However, after recent experiences she is no longer a customer.

Brown Rice Paradise was, for about six or seven years, my wife's first choice for gluten free goods, in Singapore. Brown Rice Paradise is to be found in Tanglin Mall, though it is a new shop from its original location. In all that time, Syahidah would make a couple of trips a month to Brown Rice Paradise. She was one of its more loyal and reliable customers. She was a "member" and was accorded discount privileges in thanks for her regularity of custom. Yet, something happened to change all that.

Brown Rice Paradise was taken over by new management. The new team spoke of wanting to engage the customer...but in reality nothing could be further from the truth. Syahidah found out that something was wrong when she came to the counter to make her purchases one day. She gave her membership details, as usual, but was refused a discount. The fellow behind the counter was rather impolite and said that Brown Rice Paradise was not going to accept any of the previous memberships until they "proved themselves". Every former member would now have to "show their seriousness", by buying 500 dollars worth of goods in one month - and keeping the receipts to prove it. Then they would be allowed to reactivate their memberships. Syahidah was flabbergasted. She had been a loyal customer for over half a dozen years...and was now being asked to prove her loyalty! This was bonkers.

It is pretty difficult for a family of ordinary size to spend 500 dollars in one month on gluten free flour and related goods. It was, in fact, a mad request.

"You are going to lose a lot of customers with this new policy." Syahidah observed to him.

"It doesn't matter. We will get other customers.", he replied, with a dismissive shrug. His attitude was rather arrogant and not a little rude.

Syahidah had had enough - she left the shop.

Syahidah decided to use reason. She emailed the store explaining the situation. The reply refused to acknowledge the silliness of the situation and reiterated the conditions of continued membership. She then called the shop, and the man on the phone explained that all former members had to prove their loyalty before being reactivated. Syahidah repeated the tale of the 500 dollar per month requirement and the man made but one concession: that it could be, instead spread out over three months.

Syahidah wasn't having any of it: why should she strive to meet a particular spending target, now, after being a consistent, reliable customer for six or seven years? On top of that was the attitude of the staff: they seemed to have contracted a strange snobbery in which, if the customer was not a high-spender, they were not regarded as a customer at all. This strange superciliousness was combined with a rudeness towards all who would not meet their odd demands.

Syahidah was not alone in encountering this problem. Many of the friends she had introduced to Brown Rice Paradise over the years, were also snubbed at the counter, when they sought to use their memberships. As a consequence, all of them...every single one of them...have changed stores: they now travel further afield to shop in other organic stores across Singapore. What Brown Rice Paradise's new management haven't realized is that people will go out of their way to avoid ill-treatment when they receive it. Many people would rather travel twice as far and be treated twice as well - than travel half as far, and be treated half as well.

Having tried her best to reason with the unreasonable new management team at Brown Rice Paradise, Syahidah did what her friends had done before her: began to shop elsewhere.

It will be interesting to see just how long, or short, a tenure the new management at Brown Rice Paradise have. Surely, any team that manages to offend, wholesale their long term customer base, is a team that cannot be doing the best by their business.

Customer service disasters, such as this one, at Brown Rice Paradise, are not uncommon. They differ in the details, but the underlying theme is the same: utter contempt for the customer. They seem to believe that the customer is so sheep-like that they will accept any ill-treatment and still return begging for more. It never occurs to them that Singaporeans have voices of their own and are prepared to use them, in defense of themselves, when they feel wronged. It never occurs to them that every act of poor customer service, breeds word of mouth, telling and retelling the tale again and again until its reputational effect is amplified beyond calculation. It never occurs to them that the first role of any shopkeeper is to keep the customer happy, to keep the shop at all, if you know what I mean. The shopkeeper who looks down on his customers, as Brown Rice Paradise clearly looked down on my wife and her friends, is a shopkeeper who soon won't have any customers to look upon at all - down or otherwise.

Brown Rice Paradise was a great shop for the first six or seven years that my wife treated it as her local store for her favourite goodies. Now, Brown Rice Paradise is not a good store. It cannot be a good store when its management are so customer unfriendly. Brown Rice Paradise is where my wife USED to shop - but no longer. I wonder how much longer they will be under this particular management team? It seems to me that it might not be long.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to:http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

What kind of country is this?

The words in the title are not my own, they are words I overheard the other day.

A few days ago, I was standing in a taxi rank behind three East European men of about 30. They had the air of recent visitors about them. Like them, I had waited perhaps 25 minutes to get to the front of the taxi rank, in Orchard. They were keen to get to their destination, since, rather than sit, they stood, all the while, and paced a little, talking among themselves in quick, hurried speech, of an unknown language.

Finally, they got to the front of the queue. The largest of the three men opened the taxi door and prepared to get in. The driver spoke to him, in words I couldn't hear - but their meaning was clear.

The large man said a destination.

The taxi driver who had been looking at him turned away, facing the front and prepared to drive off. The large East European man closed the door and watched the taxi pull away, empty.

The poor man was utterly dumbfounded: he just couldn't believe that, rather than take him and his two friends, to their destination, this taxi driver preferred to drive off, empty of passengers.

For the benefit of all to hear, the East European man spoke his first English, quite loudly: "What kind of country is this?"

It seemed obvious that he had never encountered such behaviour before, anywhere, in his life - otherwise he wouldn't have been so taken aback by it.

Singapore is a country in which strange practices abound - yet the locals see them as normal. In Singapore, taxi drivers choose where they want to go - and will often turn down a fare that is not going where the driver wants to go. In the twenty or so countries I have visited, this is the only one in which I have observed this behaviour: it is quite bizarre.

Yet, instead of permitting such crassness on the part of taxi drivers, perhaps Singapore should think about the impression it leaves on the millions of annual visitors. The behaviour of drivers snubbing passengers is so common that a visitor would not have to be here long, to encounter it. Many of the visitors can expect to be so snubbed on their visit. What impression does that leave? Well, the reaction of the East European man is telling: the typical visitor will be utterly unimpressed by Singapore if they are ill-treated in this manner. No doubt, that man and his friends will go back to Europe with tales of the crazy drivers and the unbelievable rudeness of Singaporean workers. Is that the impression Singapore wants to create?

A driver should not have the right to refuse a passenger. They should have to take anyone, anywhere, without any discretion over the matter at all. This should be enforced by steep fines and revocation of their license to drive. Then, perhaps, visitors like those East Europeans will not have tales to tell of rude Singaporean drivers when they go home.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and five months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and ten months, and Tiarnan, twenty-seven months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind, niño, gênio criança, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)