Job Discussion Forums

[ragazzo gallese]

Am I having an anti-Vietnam day, or is the quality of service in most places consistently poor?

Case in point, I just returned from my local coffee shop. They do a half decent espresso there. However, the guy who usually serves me wasn't there. By the way, there were three members of staff and about six customers. This is how it went:

Minute 0: I arrive. I am then ignored for a few minutes until a menu arrives.
Minute 5: Me - One cappuccino please. Waiter - OK.
Minute 10: Me - I ordered a cappuccino, where is it? Waiter - OK, 1 minute.
Minute 15: Me - Sorry, but where is my coffee? Waiter - Coffee come 1 minute.
Minute 20: I walk out.

I'm noticing this stuff more and more. Guys in mid-range ex-pat bars sitting with empty glasses for ten minutes while six waitresses stand around. Main courses arriving ten minutes apart. Plates and glasses being cleared while people are still eating and drinking. Three people rushing around like headless chickens trying to do what it would take one competent person to do. Bills having extra items on them (either through incompetence or dishonesty, I don't know).

I worked in a restaurant throughout uni, and I would have been sacked within a day if I'd behaved like many Vietnamese waiting staff. What's the problem here? Lack of training? Lack of initiative? Rubbish pay?

What are your thoughts?

[DNK]

A frequent a few restaurants, and generally this isn't a problem: the staff treat me very well and are attentive, the food is cooked and served within 10min usually and is fairly consistent in quality, they remember my preferences so I don't need to really order, and they have fairly small staff:customer ratios.

That said, I know what you mean, and there's a reason I regular those places and not others, and those tend to be Western-friendly places in Westerner areas, rather than local-targeted places in local areas.

Don't know how many times I sat and made like 20sec eye contact + waving my hand at a waiter or "supervisor" just to have the person stand there and make no attempt to come over. A lot of people here genuinely suck at waiting tables, and the supervision sucks as well, and the management as well as they have 2-3x as many people working as they need.

[[email protected]]

Poor service could be due to a whole host of problems. Bad pay, untrained staff members, crappy management, etc. Even sometimes at the the high end restaurants I get bad service. Too many people here uneducated about too many things whether it's the driving or the service.

[Mattingly]

Service in VN is in general, bad.

Lack of training: places don't even train the basics.

How about just doing the basics?

Attitude: at least pretend.

Honestly: no comment.

[LettersAthruZ]

[Jbhughes]

Personally, I like the fact that labour here is cheap, plentiful and companies are happy to overstaff. It provides plenty of young people with a bit of pocket money or some contribution to the household and keeps them 'busy.' Something about it seems to be good for the economy in that staff don't seem to be a big expenditure for companies and there are lots of jobs provided in this way.

It seems to me that back in the UK staff were the biggest overhead and were reduced to save costs to the nth degree. Shift work and split shifts and disgruntled staff who had to be pushed really hard if there was a rush in custom during a predicted slow period all don't provide for a happy workforce. Not to mention endless targets.

However, I hate it when staff are impolite or lazy when dealing with customers and I do notice it a fair bit in VN. I mean, not everyone in VN knows how to deal with Westerners in what we would see as a polite or well-mannered way and I don't expect this from places not set-up to deal with Westerners (or places with prices not reflecting having to hire English-speaking/Western-trained staff). Would a waiter serving a Vietnamese family in the UK/insert favoured Anglophone country/ know to serve the man first rather than the lady and to use two hands when serving anyone not obviously younger than them?
What I do expect is for staff to at least have a go at being polite and respectful and not to forget all of the Vietnamese customs involved with being polite in a fit of tittish giggles and rock paper scissors to see who has to serve the foreigner. What about when they stand right by you shouting their head off for the person who can speak a few words of English, without acknowledging you at all - even if you speak Vietnamese to them! OR when they start laughing when a foreigner speaks Vietnamese! GRRRRRRRRRR!

That said, I have met a lot of very respectful and tremendously polite Vietnamese people in the forms of waiters and waitresses, hotel owners and staff, train attendants and bus attendants and just people in the street. Also, one lovely thing here is that generally, you don't get ignored out in the street at all. I'm forever asking directions to somewhere leaning off my bike and whether it be on the 'hard shoulder' of Highway 1 or turned into some scrappy farmyard out in the sticks they will always acknowledge me and if they know (often even if they don't) the directions to where I want to go (or where they think I want to go) they will always give an attempt at getting me to understand their directions.

[1st Sgt Welsh]

On the whole, I would say the customer service in Vietnam is pretty half-arsed. But then again, the wages here for hospitality staff are undoubtedly abysmal and the training that they usually receive would be poor, assuming they receive any. Furthermore, this is not a 'tipping culture' and I've even heard that often any tips that staff do make go straight to the boss . Anyway I can understand why there is very little incentive for hospitality staff here to go that extra mile and do everything possible to ensure that customers are completely satisfied. Ask yourself the question honestly - would you? As long as they are reasonably polite and do their job (even if it's somewhat badly) than, personally, I'm usually happy enough with this.

In short, you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. Also if you choose to dine at a restaurant where you are paying around $5 for a main course and a beer than I don't know that your expectations should be that high to begin with. This is how I look at it and, admittedly, quite often here I've endured service that even the most patient of customers would regard as dreadful. On the occasions that this has occurred, I don't leave a tip and I don't go back. Once you have lived in a place for a while you get to know where the good joints are and, like DNK, I tend to be loyal to a small selection of places where the service is OK.

[Andy123]

I empathize with the workers but it is out of our control. The service has become considerably worse within the last year. Why? I am not sure.

I have been going to a rather up scale Viet Kieu owned restaurant daily for several months. The staff continuously changes. I tip well and get along with the staff quite well. However, the service recently has become quite bad. I know the owner and asked to talk to him during my last visit.

He told me point blank that I complain too much and he doesn't care if I come back. That said, I eat at a Vietnamese restaurant that the locals eat at and I am quite happy.

They do not get it that if you treat people badly, people will not come back. Common business sense to us but not to them.

[mark_in_saigon]

This has been a communist system in the recent past, where the theory is everyone gets the same reward regardless of his effort.

If you are from the U.S. like I am, ask yourself, has the quality of service been trending down or up over there the last decade or so? What are the forces driving this trend? Are those forces in play here also?

If you came here some 6 years ago or longer, you saw this nice period where the westerner was greatly admired, desired, respected and coddled. What is the trend on this?

This system is changing quickly, and the people's attitudes are changing as well. This is not mainly about how they see us either, it is about how they see themselves in their system, and how they should attempt to improve their own positions.

It is my opinion that there can be some very compelling reasons for living here, and one can possibly have a much better life here than in the west. But it is in sum, it is not every aspect, it should be obvious that some of the things about life here are never going to be pleasant and we are just going to have to accept those things and come up with personal strategies for dealing with them. We are never going to be able to walk the sidewalks and expect not to be dodging motorbikes. Same thing with restaurants and a host of other issues. I would never recommend a westerner come here unless he has a real reason, this is not some lovely journey through a fascinating traditional culture. If you do not have a clear compelling reason or reasons for being here that you are sure will outweigh the unavoidable difficulties, there has to be somewhere better than this.

[[email protected]]

@Andy123

If the owner said that to you then, I wouldn't really consider him a Viet Kieu. It seems the owner has picked up some bad habits from being here too long. I hope I don't do the same. I'm considered a Viet Kieu here and if I had my own business, I would never say that to any customer. Always thought of owning a business here and running it the way we do back in the west. Not only will foreigners like it, but the locals will too. They pay for their $5 for their food, but when they leave, they feel that they just got a $50 dollar service. Really not that hard to understand if you want your business to be successful.

[DNK]

A few more points...

First, I don't have a huge issue with overstaffing. I've been on the receiving end of understaffing (or, more appropriately, hellstaffing where everyone ends up doing 2-3x their "normal" work). It's not pleasant, and I'll be the first to say that the American approach is really crap for the workers.

That said, overstaffing kills any money the employees can expect to see, assuming management/ownership don't take the extra profits from reduced staff all for themselves. I guess it's the old pay versus employment struggle, and here it seems to be heavy on the employment side (and in America it's sort of on neither side).



Second, I wouldn't say that a hostile vibe is the issue as I don't feel it so much; it's more the general lack of interest in the customer. On the other hand, the American-super-happy-I-love-you-and-serving-you-is-the-only-important-thing-in-my-life-smilesmilesmile attitude really annoys me as well, and I consider it a breath of fresh air to not be exposed to that everywhere I go here.



Last, regarding this:

[refugee]

I don't know. If I was paid $100 a month and was unlikely to get a tip I probably wouldn't bother rushing over to your table either.

I suppose service in Korea is fantastic, despite the staff being paid peanuts, and they are rarely tipped, so perhaps it's a cultural thing too...

[I'm With Stupid]

I think the comparison that really stood out to me was Cambodia. Frankly, they wipe the floor with Vietnam when it comes to customer service. Hell, even the kids selling stuff to tourists come with a bit of banter (not that I'm approving of that, just comparing). I know from working in restaurants in the UK that a large number of staff will do the minimum they can get away with, so it has to be down to the management to motivate them. I used to go to a bar/restaurant every day, and there was one supervisor who was really good. She left, and the service suffered massively. I don't think you can blame the wages, because working in a restaurant is a low-paid job anywhere in the world. It's basic management and organisation that is responsible for problems like billing errors, wrong orders, and an inability to bring meals out at the same time.

One that always gets me is the sheer number of staff in a supermarket standing around doing nothing, and despite this, the complete inability to open another till when there's a huge queue.

[DNK]

^ Yeah, gotta love that. I also love that all that extra staff can't bag items, so basically the lines take more than twice as long as if there was a bagger, since the cashier keeps shifting between the two tasks. A large reason I just avoid COOP Mart now.

Waiting isn't terribly low-paid work in the US, though. During good hours, it's probably one of the best paid retail jobs available, even at smaller restaurants, and even bests a lot of lower-middle income type jobs.

And those wait staffs have what we like to call "incentives" to treat the customers well. Maybe if tipping was common in VN, things would be different?

[deadlift]

Yeah, crappy customer service is one of the big drawbacks of Vietnam. Like others, I have a shortlist of places that I go to regularly. It's shorter than I'd like, but a lot of places don't make the cut because consistency is lacking. I don't want to roll the dice with my precious Sunday breakfast, so I stick with my handful of sure bets.

Being a regular helps a lot, especially if you generally order the same thing. I also bring a lot of friends to these places, and the staff can see the value in keeping me happy. I have also noticed a vast difference in how I am served when I'm wearing shorts, t-shirt and flip-flops versus when I'm dressed for work. I think that business attire makes a much stronger "I live here and will come back if I like it" statement. I've gone so far as to wear my work ID when I get clothes tailored, and used a promise to endorse the place to my colleagues as a bargaining chip.

I have to say, some of the most vocal complainers I know are themselves very difficult customers. The kind that make extensive changes to menu items, insist on very particular preparation or presentation of their food, and generally make little effort to explain their requests. They throw their toys over every little thing, and can be downright insulting to service staff.

My major pet hate is places in which I receive the royal treatment when I'm there by myself, but if I go with my VN girlfriend, we'll be ignored and given surly and reluctant service. Phatty's is particularly bad for this.