Wednesday 7 May 2008

Cleanliness is next to Godliness

I had half a mind to report to the authorities about the conditions of our pantry, which is quite abominable, and I’m sure breaking a lot of health code. For starters, it is overrun by cockroaches that can be seen running freely up and down the countertops where people are having breakfast. In the area where they prepared hot drinks, again the cockroaches running about as usual among the cutleries and bread and butter.

By the way, this pantry is operated by an individual who got the contract thru a tender process, and who supposedly had a connection with a minister. That’s why he got this contract in the first place. And that’s why the service is so lousy. He had no previous background in catering, and his staff was equally as bad in delivering their service.

Case in point: the pantry have to provide our meetings with refreshment, normally hot drinks plus 2 types of kuih or sandwich. They would always deliver the refreshment at least half an hour late, when you’ve already started the meeting, especially with outsiders or foreign guests. I almost died of embarrassment when the boys sending the refreshment, late by half an hour, setting the table with cups and saucers, their bodies very smelly from the sweat, wearing white shirts which was almost grey, their fingernails dirty. Setting up the glass for mineral water holding the mouth of the glass. The foreigners wouldn’t dream of drinking from that glass. I wouldn’t drink from that glass. Other horror stories such as the cup smelling of cockroaches (probably from the cockroaches running up and down the pantry) and my colleagues have discovered cockroaches legs inside the hot drinks (eep!).

Last week I was surprised to hear that his contract got renewed even though the service was so bad and that the minister who’d be able to influence the appointment was no longer in service. Reasons for renewal was because he hadn’t been able to pay up his loan that he took when he started this service. Go figure, with bad service and cleanliness issue, people aren’t going to the pantry to eat. I for one have stopped going there for ages. People should boycott him so that his service can be terminated and end our suffering. Period.

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