Internet rallies behind Singapore restaurant owner over email spat with customer

Despite a Dempsey Road restaurant owner’s “internet victory” over a potential customer who published an email from him that contained the f-bomb, the latter still feels its use was uncalled for.

Arun Ratnaa had on Saturday, the second day of Chinese New Year, written a complaint letter to the management of Spanish restaurant Don Quijote over what he calls “questionable service” from one of its wait staff.

“Disappointed by the service rendered to me at your door,” he wrote at the end of an email he had written to them, where he explained that the staff appeared unwilling to serve him or help him to find a seat, even though the inside of the restaurant was “perhaps half-full”.

In response, however, restaurant proprietor Ken Lim said in a brief, but strongly-worded email, “In eight words, who the f**k do you think you are??”, a reply that stunned Arun enough to put it up in a public post on his Facebook timeline.

‘Racist’, ‘abusive’, ‘bully-like'

While backlash online initially ensued against Lim and Don Quijote, the restaurant quickly regained its support when Lim hit back at Arun in a follow-up post on its Facebook page, levelling criticism of Arun being “racist”, “abusive" and “bully-like”. Lim also asserted that his wait staff had apologised repeatedly to Arun.

The 27-year-old remains unaffected by any flak he might have gotten for his actions, though, and stands by his view that Lim should not have used the word in his response to him.

“The point of the matter is no matter what kind of service feedback you receive, you never reply with ‘Who the f**k do you think you are?’, pardon my French. It just doesn’t quite make sense to me,” he said. “I mean, it’s a big no-no for service recovery to be angry at the person.”

In his Facebook post, Arun explained he had written to the management because he felt the need to give “heads up on bad service”, being in the food and beverage (F&B) industry as well — Arun is the marketing manager of Shiraz, another local restaurant.

“I was like, okay, that’s one way to treat someone,” he said. “I really appreciate when someone actually takes the time and sends a message about how our service could be improved, or anything that they notice could be bettered. So when I was served by a service staff who wasn’t really eager to serve, it was like, ‘hmm, maybe the management should know about this’.”

Turned away by wait staff

A frequent visitor to restaurants at Dempsey Hill and Dempsey Road, Arun told Yahoo Singapore on Tuesday he was recommended to try Don Quijote by friends, and so brought a friend there for dinner.

After waiting for awhile, he caught the attention of a waitress and asked her if she could find them a seat outside.

“She came outside, she looked around, she looked at me and said, ‘Uh, sorry sir, we’re full’,” he said. After saying he was agreeable to sitting inside the restaurant as well, she went in, and he followed her, noting that the tables were “perhaps half-full”.

“She just seemed very reluctant to answer me,” he said. “When she was talking to me, she wasn’t really exactly very keen to serve. There was some hesitation, I do not know why… so after that, I was like, okay, I really don’t want to eat here, so I said thank you, and I left, and then I went down to La Forketta and had my meal there instead.”

He also said it was strange to be turned away from the restaurant without any explanation. “I’d have been glad to wait for maybe 10, 15 minutes at the bar while waiting for a table, but she didn’t even say, you know, come back in half an hour or anything — nothing.”

Signed off with company credentials

After leaving, Arun said he sent the email to the restaurant’s general customer email address from his phone, which he said only had his work email account — hence automatically appending to it his official work signature with his designation.

This, unfortunately, was something Lim took significant issue with.

In a response post he shared on Don Quijote’s Facebook page, he wrote, “Was your visit in a personal or corporate capacity? Were you emailing us in your ‘professional’ (I would have to use this word very loosely with you) capacity and complaining as a representative of your company?” Lim also said that if Arun had written in his personal capacity, he would have “bestowed every courtesy that is bestowed on ALL (his) customers”.

“In my opinion, your deplorable behaviour towards both my staff and us all collectively was bully-like and racist-like which just added to things and I responded accordingly,” he concluded.

‘A bit low’ to insinuate racism

In a follow-up post to the initial response on Don Quijote’s page, Lim said he felt “humbled and grateful” to see fans of the restaurant speaking up in support of him and his restaurant’s service.

“We are also thankful that a vast majority of all of you have also looked beyond what was meant to be a direct and private response from me that was meant for just one person to see, but he (Arun) chose to try to ‘do me in’ by gathering a public mob against me, which has since unfortunately for him, backfired,” he wrote.

“This was never meant to be a popular vote on who should’ve said what and who shouldn’t have said what.. Whatever has been said and done, is exactly just that and that should be the end of it,” he concluded, adding that he will be removing posts and threads about the incident by the end of Tuesday.

Asked about the post Lim had made, Arun said he felt it was “a bit low” of Lim to insinuate that he was being racist. “I mean I’m half Chinese and half Indian, and I look Filipino; are you really going to say that I’m racist?” he asked, pointing out at the same time that he is Singaporean.

On Lim taking issue with him sending his email from his corporate account, Arun stressed that what he said was "by no means representative" of the restaurant he works at, adding that it should not have mattered, because “it’s merely me as a consumer noticing something".

Yahoo Singapore has written to Lim to seek further comment.