Customer Service - we're terrible at it

I had dinner in Pepper Lunch in Rockwell late last week. The food is superb as usual - the servings and the taste make the somewhat expensive dishes worth it.

Yes, I still consider a Php250 plate expensive in the same way I think a Php400 blouse is expensive. Affordable plates are around Php150, whereas affordable, pretty tops are around Php. And yes, I do find it very difficult to buy new pairs of footwear because I need above average foot comfort. But no, jeans come very cheap with me at around Php350 per pair.

Anyway, I wanted to say something about restaurant service because of my last visit in Pepper Lunch: why do I (like most Filipinos) find it difficult to assert my right to receive quality goods and quality service?

What happened was my boyfriend ordered one chicken plate and one beef plate with extra egg. The orders appear on the cashier screen but he didn't bother to check. When the price appeared, he paid and we took our seats.

When the waiter came to deliver one order, we mentioned that mine was a chicken dish. He seemed confused and asked for our receipt. And our receipts showed two beef plates, no extra egg order. He told us to take it up on the cashier. We did and it was a smooth order update - with only a small hint of annoyance from the cashier's demeanor.

That would have been a pretty good transaction if it ended there. But then we heard the waiters talking (quite loudly) that the order was changed. "Ayaw e" (They don't want [to stick to the first order]). "Magkano nanaman yan?" (How much more will that cost us?)

When that happened, the whole thing felt unforgivable. I'm on the edge of filing an official complaint but my friends really like the food in that restaurant and I don't want any negative relationship with their staff... I always feel like I'm at the mercy of the people who prepare my food.

So now I'm thinking:
• Should I have stuck with the wrongly punched order?
• Is it the customer's responsibility to make sure the cashier does her job right?

Sure it would have saved everyone the trouble if we checked the order, but why did the cashier get two out of three items wrong? It would have saved everyone the trouble if she did her job right. She could have, at the very least asked, "Please check your order on the screen".

I'm personally concerned because I don't know how such negligence/mistakes affect the employees' salaries.

And I'm personally concerned because customer service generally sucks in the Philippines. But that incident with the employees talking like that was totally out of line. I would not have tolerated it if it were a casual incident, and I hate that paying customers have to experience it.

I'm not singling out Pepper Lunch's service. We've been there a dozen times and it's only this last visit that this happened. It really feels like a problem rooting from our culture - it's happening everywhere. We have to fix this somehow.