For the price of coffee

blog-coffee-bean.gifThe local news has been reporting on Singapore’s happiest person, and in the spirit of things, here’s a letter written to The Straits Times that’d be guaranteed to bring a smile – though at the expense of someone else (maybe). :) Emphasis mine on the below:

April 18, 2008

Was power switched off deliberately at Coffee Bean outlet?

MY FRIENDS and I were enjoying our regular round of drinks while getting some revision done at the Coffee Bean outlet at Plaza by The Park at around 8pm on April 11. Noticing that my laptop’s battery was running dangerously low, I decided to use the power socket located near our table.

After some five minutes, I realised that my laptop was still not charging. I sensed that it had something to do with the central power switch which controls the power supply to all of the power sockets within the outlet. So I went up to an employee and told him that the power socket was not working. He said he would check and, shortly thereafter, I heard the charging beep of my laptop.

Fifteen minutes later, the same thing happened. My laptop suffered a ‘mysterious’ blackout. I spoke to the same employee demanding an explanation. He told me that the power socket was faulty and that it was beyond his control.

I have this poser: Assuming that the power supply was switched off deliberately, is it too much to ask that I be informed beforehand so that I could save any important documents which I might be working on? And if the power supply was switched off to prevent customers from hogging the tables, then why was it turned off while we were still eating our cakes?

Gerald Chen Youxin

Wow – and just when I’d been remarking on how impossible are some Singaporeans to please when it comes to customer service. Apparently, in Mr. Chen’s viewpoint, paying for a cuppa entitles him to using AC power too. The next time I go to Mcdonald’s, maybe I should pull the same trick and insist on using their power socket to charge up my notebook, my DSLR camera battery, my handphone, and the several dozen AA sized batteries I used to power my aircon PS3, Plasma TV, DVD controllers! :)

The followup discussion thread right here basically echoes what every reasonable person would say in response to Mr. Chen.

2 thoughts on “For the price of coffee

  1. Well, the model is sold body only and doesn’t come with a kit lens; so camera body + a Nikon low grade 18-55mm bottom-of-the-barrel lens, a shade under $3K.:(

Comments are closed.