SINGAPORE: An encounter with a female server at Lau Pa Sat left a tourist from Australia genuinely puzzled, as he wondered what he needed to do.
A TikTok user named @CHRISTOS asked whether he had been at the receiving end of “normal service in Singapore” or if he had just caught the woman on a bad day.
At the beginning of his clip, he is seen going up to a counter, greeting the server, and then politely asking for a pint of Tiger beer and an iced lemon tea.
The server, who is masked, told him his beer would cost S$12.
When he handed her his payment, he asked about his additional order of iced tea.
The woman made a quick gesture with her hand and said, “Behind,” and then went about her duties, going on to get his beer.
This, apparently, was the point of confusion.
The TikTok user can be seen trying to hand over some more money to her, which she, understandably, did not pay attention to. He then turned the camera toward himself and said, “What?”
The server, meanwhile, put his pint in front of him and walked away.
“She seems in a bad mood. Do I really want to ask her about the…” he said, breaking into a slight chuckle.
Off-camera, a female voice is heard saying loudly, “Take it, take it!” and Christos’s companion urges him to do the same.
The encounter threw him off, he wrote in the caption.
“Forget about it,” he said as he walked away.
“Why was she so mad, though? What the heck?” he asked, though he admitted that the beer tasted good. Though he’d had it in other Asian countries, it was his first time trying Tiger Beer in Singapore, and he celebrated the fact that it was a Singaporean brand.
He also said that the woman could have at least smiled at him, and that would have gone a long way. Christos seemed ready enough to shake it off, though he prefers friendly service.
Commenters on the video helped clear things up, telling Christos that the woman had actually said that the iced lemon tea he was asking for was served elsewhere.
“She actually replied to you ‘behind’ when you asked for the iced lemon tea. In other words, her station only sells beer, and you have to go to another counter to order the iced lemon tea,” one wrote.
Others told him that this type of interaction is not uncommon.
“Yes, all Singaporean service is like this; it's very normal and part of their tradition. Please try to understand,” a commenter added. /TISG
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