the garden slug

I’m re-posting something I read on http://miyagi.sg

It’s a sad thing that we’re so used to sub-standard customer service here that when sales and service staff actually display any bit of pride and love in their work, we’re impressed to the point of wanting to blog about them.

That’s not to say that Jenny of Silic Lighting Centre merely has a modicum of pride and love in her work. As I blogged previously, hers was the only shop along Balestier Road (aka Lighting Avenue) whose occupants even entertained the idea of trying to fix my mother’s old Tiffany lamp.

Some time last week, Jenny called to tell me that she found some parts that would fit the lamp, although they weren’t exactly a match for the old brass parts, and for the parts she couldn’t find, that she had gone to her company’s factory and made the parts to fit the lamp.

Then she told me that she had to bill me about $150, and asked if that was ok. I was so thrilled I said yes and she then asked me to bring the lamp shade because she wanted to take a look at it.

When I got to the shop with the lamp shade, Jenny assembled the whole thing and then turned on the lamp and admired it for a few quite seconds before she took a paint brush from her desk and brushed the dust off the lamp shade, sighed, and remarked how pretty it was, and how my mother must have been sad to part with it.

Because it looked like it was going to rain, and because I was illegally parked, I thanked Jenny and said I’d bring in more lights for her to fix if any more of my mother’s hand me downs needed fixing.

Then she says, “Actually, we don’t do repairs, but I knew you wouldn’t be able to get that lamp fixed anywhere else.”

Silic Lighting Centre

509 Balestier Road

Singapore 329848 (map)

Tel: 63561629

Incidentally, The Garden Slug also bought all our shop’s lights from Jenny’s little lightshop.. She was probably the only person along the entire stretch of Balestier that didn’t scoff at our tiny budget.. Infact, she took so much time to attend to us even though we went into her shop in our raggedy berms and paint-stained T shirts. So, the slugs should all aspire to be like Jenny, we should always do things out of the odinary for our customers and we must always “go the extra mile”. These are the little things that keep our customers happy and delighted…

I’m actually glad that the young slugs often come to the kitchen asking for things that are not on the menu, this shows that they always try to meet customers’ special requests instead of saying, ” No, we don’t have that on the menu”, which is something that we hear so often when we eat out…

That’s why, after 2 years, it is still a joy working at The Garden Slug, no red tape, no 1000-pg hand book to refer to. Just 1 mantra, ” Make the customer Happy, as far as possible ”

Have a gd day folks!