The Long Wait for Donuts

Yesterday, I was at the downtown shopping mall where the famous Donut Factory was located. When we walked pass the shop, my friend and I decided to stop by to buy some donuts home for breakfast the next day.

Talking about this Donut Factory, ever since it was opened many months ago, there was always a long queue. At one time, the average waiting time was 2-3 hours, and I had always wondered why people would bother to queue for hours just to buy the donuts.

We joined the queue, mentally preparing ourselves to wait for at least an hour.

I was attracted to the signboard at the beginning of the queue and I walked nearer to have a closer look. I was amused with what was written there. Essentially, the shop appeals to the customers to be patient and cooperative, as they had tried different ways to reduce the waiting time, but so far they had not been able to achieve much success.

Ha, looks like this method works. Everyone in the queue was waiting patiently and engaged in their own activities – SMSing, reading, listening to MP3, talking over the phone or chatting. Nobody seemed to be bothered by the long wait.

After waiting patiently for about 45 minutes, we finally reached the front counter. Woh, this is fantastic, the waiting time was much shorter than we thought. We were eager to place our order, but believe it or not, no one took our order until 5 minutes later – the girl who was serving at the counter was asked to help out in manning the queue and her replacement was nowhere to be seen. The other girl at the counter was busy packing the boxes of donuts for the previous orders.

Finally, another girl arrived, presumably just started her shift work. She apologized, took her time to put on her apron and glove, and started to serve us. By then, we found ourselves feeling agitated and the people standing behind us were getting impatient. It took another 10 minutes before we got our 2 boxes of donuts, as there were a few other hiccups encountered.

When we finally walked away with our donuts, I could not help it but thought about what I read on the signboard … if only that the episode in the last 15 minutes did not happen, I would have been a very satisfied customers - as I managed to get my donuts in less than half the normal waiting time of 2-3 hours!