I'm sitting in a cafe right now waiting on some lunch, a place clearly targeting westerners, and the TV is tuned into some Chinese soap opera with Khmer shitty dubs... because the staff turned it there to watch and we interrupted them. This is wrong for a number of reasons, and honestly western business owners should enforce with their staff rules against it.

1. It makes customers feel like they are an inconvenience for interrupting instead of a welcome guest.

2. It distracts the staff and impacts their performance.

3. Its not entertaining to most customers, and annoying to many making their dining/drinking experience unpleasant.

4. Its consuming a resource that COULD be entertaining customers and making them stay longer (spend more) and return often.


If this were an isolated thing I'd just shut up and not come back.... But I see it all over the place. They already have one of the cushiest jobs, hanging out and serving versus sweating away in a factory or a rice paddy, so its not some necessary perk to attract employees, and it has a negative impact on business.

OrangeDragon wrote:I'm sitting in a cafe right now waiting on some lunch, a place clearly targeting westerners, and the TV is tuned into some Chinese soap opera with Khmer shitty dubs... because the staff turned it there to watch and we interrupted them. This is wrong for a number of reasons, and honestly western business owners should enforce with their staff rules against it.

1. It makes customers feel like they are an inconvenience for interrupting instead of a welcome guest.

2. It distracts the staff and impacts their performance.

3. Its not entertaining to most customers, and annoying to many making their dining/drinking experience unpleasant.

4. Its consuming a resource that COULD be entertaining customers and making them stay longer (spend more) and return often.


If this were an isolated thing I'd just shut up and not come back.... But I see it all over the place. They already have one of the cushiest jobs, hanging out and serving versus sweating away in a factory or a rice paddy, so its not some necessary perk to attract employees, and it has a negative impact on business.

I used to avoid any business with a TV, unfortunately TVs have come to infest nearly all businesses now, and its nigh on imposible to avoid them. I still wont go into eating establishments with TVs but with bars I have little option. Agreed if the venue has a TV keep the control AWAY FROM STAFF! When a TV is on its difficult to avoid looking at the screen. Sometime something catches your attention, you watch, then all of a sudden the channels change rapidly as one of the staff starts absent mindedly flicking channles. That used to happen often at a bar I frequent. I started verbally abusing the perpetrators (in a mild sort of way ) and witholding tips, citing the staff f*****g around with the remote as the reason. Now they invariably ask me if its ok to change the channel .
As an aside I had a friend who used to cary a universal type of control around with him,and If staff changed the channel he changed it back.

all the girls watch their own stuff on smartphones anyway, so little excuse for it.

frank lee bent wrote:all the girls watch their own stuff on smartphones anyway, so little excuse for it.

Use of smart phones, or any phones for that matter while working is another anoyance. Do you want to walk into a hostess bar and see a bevy of inanimate girls glued to their phones? Some bars actually ban or severely restrict the use of phones while the girls are working.

Pet hate of mine as well.

Earlier in the year I visited a mate who had just opened a backpackers in Bali. He had a communal area next to reception where he thought he'd put a TV and dvd player for guests. The second night after its instillation I awoke to an Indonesian gathering of employees and their friends getting drunk and watching Indo films. The staff were told following complaints by guests of late night noise that there was to be no such gatherings in the future. Two days later the TV and dvd player were removed as the staff found it impossible to have a tv without it being turned on all day and night with the volume level at "fuck you."

Kuroneko wrote:

frank lee bent wrote:all the girls watch their own stuff on smartphones anyway, so little excuse for it.

Use of smart phones, or any phones for that matter while working is another anoyance. Do you want to walk into a hostess bar and see a bevy of inanimate girls glued to their phones? Some bars actually ban or severely restrict the use of phones while the girls are working.

Yeah, that would be phase 2. Have a locked box the phones go into when they arrive and come out of when they leave. No chatting on the phone, SMSing, playing on facebook, etc. You're there and paid to do 1 thing... work. Imagine if you could make them so bored the smile when a customer walks in for the break in the monotony! Customers that feel genuinely welcomed rather than a scripted artificial greeting!

And when there are no customers they might get so bored they actually start cleaning things.

Got most of a massage the other day, the missing bit was the girl constantly checking her phone. Won't be back there, especially at $10 an hour.

I've noticed that the standard of service is often very poor at foreigner orientated establishments. Sometimes I time how long it takes for a staff member to acknowledge me after I sit down. It can stretch to 30 minutes if I don't take the initiative to shout until someone looks up from their phone. If I look at the menu for more than 30 seconds they often wander off to look at something shiny so I have to shout at them again.

Another annoyance is the parking guy who makes no effort to care for the parking area and then demands 1000 riel for standing there with his belly sticking out. Having to walk through dirt, sand and broken tiles is a big turn off for me so I don't bother with those places.

I do enjoy the informal atmosphere though. I get the impression OD prefers the stale, banal settings of 1st world countries at times.

Normally those times are when I'm in places that are charging a premium for it... like $2.50 for a coffee. I feel part of the price I'm paying is for at least an attempt at that atmosphere of a 1st world experience. That and part of that informality is just plain rudeness. If you were a guest in my home and I was feeding you for free I still wouldn't put on the TV/phone and ignore you... I sure as hell wouldn't want my staff doing it to a paying customer.

ali baba wrote:I get the impression OD prefers the stale, banal settings of 1st world countries at times.

Whereas I never get that impression from OD, either online or in person.