'Hair in your soup? It's
common, madam'
Bride claims she was told this after wedding dinner, but manager
says he stated it only as possibility, as row erupts
Straits Times, The
(Singapore)
Home
November 23, 2007
Author: Marcel Lee Pereira
ALL she wanted was a sincere apology for a strand of hair found in
a bowl of shark's fin soup at her wedding dinner.
But the matter blew up into a month-long exchange between the
bride, Mrs Wendy Scully, 29, and Starworth, the company which runs
events at the Chijmes Hall.
When the public relations manager felt she was getting nowhere, she
shot a letter to this newspaper on Tuesday.
By then, it was not just the 15cm strand of hair that riled her,
but Starworth general manager K.K. Ng's suggestion that it could
have come from one of her guests.
'He told me it is common to find hair in food,' she told The
Straits Times.
The VIP table's guests, which included her husband's parents and
siblings, had not touched the serving bowl, so how could their hair
have got in, she asked.
When contacted, Mr Ng said he had suggested it only as a
possibility.
He added that none of the staff that night had long hair.
Another sticking point with Mrs Scully was that she had to wait
almost a month - until Mr Ng returned from a month's medical leave
- before she could speak to him on the phone over this matter on
Nov 15.
His reply scuttled the company's earlier efforts to settle Mrs
Scully's unhappiness with an offer of a set dinner for four worth
about $270, or a $300 dining voucher.
Mrs Scully had rebuffed the offer, saying she spent $20,000 on the
dinner, and that she wanted an amount enough for her to take the
table's guests out to dinner again to make it up to them.
The company stuck to its initial offer until Mr Ng's return,
believing it was fair because only the bowl of shark's fin soup was
affected, and the staff had offered to change it right away.
Last week, Mr Ng even upped the offer to an eight-course meal for
10, but it was his refusal to accept full responsibility that made
her decide to go public with her story.
A simple apology would have sufficed, said Mrs Scully, who said her
in-laws keep asking her if the company has given an
explanation.
'At the very least, apologise for taking so long to call me back,
accept responsibility for the incident and offer a sincere apology
for upsetting me and my mother-in-law,' she said.
A service consultant said Starworth should have acknowledged Mrs
Scully's anger and admitted to its fault immediately.
Said OTi Consulting Singapore's chief executive Helen Lim-Yang:
'When customers are angry, they don't want to hear excuses or
pushing of blame. All they want is for their emotions to be
acknowledged and for someone, preferably senior management, to
apologise profusely.'
And the apology should not come across as defensive, she
added.
Mr Ng replied that an apology was made on the spot that night by
the operations manager, and that the follow-ups with Mrs Scully
focused on 'dollar and cents compensation because we thought it was
what she wanted'.
But he stopped short of accepting responsibility for the incident,
saying that for something 'debatable' like this, it 'may not be
very fair to push everything to us'.
'We are just saying hair was found in food. We do not know where it
came from, but we would like to make it up to her by amicably
solving this.'
With the current stalemate, Ms Lim-Yang suggested that Starworth
set up a meeting to deal with it face-to-face.
'Coupons or compensations are a quick fix. They still don't take
away the anger or replace a sincere action,' she said.
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Copyright, 2007, Singapore Press Holdings Limited
