Learn English Year - Malaysia 2007

I was pretty busy for the past one week. Events are coming up and much paperwork need to be done and im kinda lazy too because I still cant get rid with the festive seasons thingy.. muahahaha...

I went to the Malaysia Tourism Centre (MTC) to get some brochures. Yes, it is Visit Malaysia Year this year.... there are tonnes of brochures that introduce wonderful places to visit in Malaysia~! They even categorized the places according to states and genre. Everything is so fine except for one thing - Customer Service!

Their staff are just sitting behind the counters waiting for people to approach them. I mean, I dont mind them sitting there doing nothing (some are actually chit chatting with their colleagues) but at least greet the people that comes in, especially foreign visitors. I saw a few foreign visitors reading brochures on their own and no one attend to them.

Actually, they did not display ALL the brochures out at the lobby area. I had to ask them for more and guess what?! They have it and they took it out from their store!

You expect the foreign visitors to get information just by reading the brochures?! Ridiculous~!

Now comes the funny part. KL Sentral is the central station whereby more than 10,000 people coming in and out every hour! There are many services such as cummuters, LRTs and also bus and taxi services. KL Sentral is the place that I always visited (at least once a week) as I need to take public transport to go around.

Earlier this afternoon, I went to KL Sentral for some business appointment. It was time to go back and I went to the taxi counter to get myself a taxi coupon. Yes, we cannot board onto a taxi just like that, we have to purchase the coupon and then board the taxi. The trip cost me RM9 from KL Sentral to Bukit Damansara. Nevermind the money, as long as I get home safe.

The thing that made me embarassed was the incident whereby the staff serving at the counter is actually eating her meal while talking to customers! She was eating fruits while talking to some customers, foreign customers!!!! Nevermind, as long as the customers were not offended (in many countries, it is consider rude to talk when you have food in your mouth, not to mention when you are serving customers).

I was again embarassed when the staff was not able to converse in English well~! There was a customer who comes from India (I know as I can recognise his accent and he doesn't understand Bahasa Malaysia). He was asking how to get to a place, and the staff (the same female staff) said, "KTM..." The Indian was confused then she said again, "Down there, keretapi...(while moving her hands front and back)"... How on earth does a man from India knows what is "keretapi" and "KTM"??? Don't the staff knows how to say "Train"? Very embarassing indeed!

Luckily the Indian guy went to another staff that was sitting at the Information Counter. I did not know what the staff told him but the Indian guy was indeed a happy man (he was smiling while he walked away with his friends) after a few seconds of conversation.

It is definitely sad seeing how hard our country is promoting the tourism industry and yet many servicing staff are not competent enough to at least "help" in making this country a better and comfortable place for foreign visitors to visit.

Visit Malaysia Year you say? I'd say Learn English (and Customer Services) Year - Malaysia 2007!