Ms Vanessa Koh explained on the Complaint Singapore Facebook page on Wednesday (Sept 14) that she had seen an elderly man with a walking stick struggling to place an order at KFC Punggol Plaza.
He waited there for around four to five minutes, and when a waitstaff, whom Ms Koh only identified as D, noticed him and told him to “just scan”. The elderly man merely replied, “Huh” which Ms Koh took to mean that he did not understand what she meant.
“The staff D proceed to raised her voice at him and walked away. What in the world. The poor elderly look so confused and he walked away slowly.”
Ms Koh, taking compassion on him, went up to the uncle and offered her assistance.
“But he said ‘it’s ok idk why the close the counter, aiya nvm it’s ok’, embarrassed at what he just experienced,” she added.
The incident made Ms Koh “so angry.”
“First of all, the staff closed the only physical counter. I observed that there were 3 staffs packing orders but none wanted to approach him at first.
Assumed that they were busy, even so, when staff D went to attend to him, she couldn’t care less to think if uncle is able to make his order via online. She just rejected him.”
Ms Koh allowed for the possibility that the staff was very busy and was rushing to fulfil orders, however, she asked, “But will it be so hard for them to just empathise with our senior citizens who aren’t tech savvy. We shouldn’t be so rude to them and just say things without thinking.”
She then appealed to KFC, saying that the outlet had been understaffed.
“But being understaffed doesn’t give you the right to be rude or raising your voice at senior citizen,” Ms Koh added.
Many netizens commenting on her post agreed that staff should be more empathetic toward senior citizens.
Others wrote about their own similar experiences.
/TISG