"Sorry, that section is closed."

One of my favorite restaurants these days is the New York New York restaurant in a newly opened shopping mall. Unfortunately, this place is always crowded during lunch and dinner time.

When I walked pass the restaurant this afternoon, to my pleasant surprise, it was relatively empty. Gone was the crowd and long queue. Hmm, perhaps it is still early, perhaps it is school examination period and perhaps many people are also away on holiday.

My friend wanted a quiet place that we can have our meal and chat, so I suggested this restaurant. We walked in, and I told the waiter that we would like to sit at the sofa seat at the far corner.

He looked at me and he said, “Sorry, that section is closed.”

“Closed, why?”

“We close it during lunch time and concentrate on this section. Why don’t you sit here?” He pointed to a seat which was just 5-6 seats away from the corner seat that I wanted, but this seat faced the escalator.

I was puzzled and I mumbled, “Well, when the crowd comes in later, you will still have to open that section anyway, so why can’t we sit there? This seat faces the escalator, I think I will get dizzy after a while with all the people movement.” But, I did not insist, instead I moved towards the seat that he wanted us to be at.

Just when we were about to sit down, he changed his mind, “Okie, you can sit there.” “What?” “Oh, you can sit at that corner”, he repeated.

As I was engaged in a conversation with my friend, I did not bother to ask him why he changed his mind.

I sat down but my mind was replaying this episode that just happened. I recalled reading in the newspaper this morning that “Singapore is now ranked 15th in customer service, a marked improvement over the previous year.”

Till now, I am still trying to make sense out of what I had read this morning and what had happened in the restaurant …