Monday mornings are usually the only time of the week when the CLEO girls are quiet. This morning, Cheryl was not quiet. In fact, she was fuming mad. Standing at my desk, she started recounting her horrible night out over the weekend. I must admit, I didn’t hear the first part of it cos it just takes that much longer for me to process things on a Monday morning. But when I finally paid attention to her, I got annoyed by what had happened to her. Cos I know there’s nothing worse than having your night out spoilt by rude service staff.
So today, I present our guest blogger, Cheryl. Let her tell you what happened.
Oh and if you’ve suffered bad service at any club, feel free to rant and rave here. Monday blues just got his ass kicked by Monday angst.
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“I may not be one of those clock-watchers at work cos I do enjoy my work, but I definitely love my weekends. I believe in working hard and playing hard, so I’ll always try to make the most of the 48 hours.
Last weekend, my friend invited me to a party at Stereolab. “Come on, it’ll be fun! It’s Frankie Knuckles!”
I wasn’t too keen on Stereolab and Stereolounge. I’d only been there once, and let’s just say I didn’t really feel welcome there. “Don’t worry, it’ll be better this time! I’ll get my boyfriend’s friend to put you guys down on the guestlist! We’ll all have fun together!” she enthused. I gave in. After all, I always believed that it was the company that made the night fun.
So on Saturday night, we shared a cab and alighted at Pan Pacific. As we walked towards the guestlist queue, we found our paths abruptly blocked by a tall bouncer.
“This is the guestlist queue, you know? Are you on the guestlist?” he asked in far-from-friendly tone.
We stopped in our tracks and looked around. We weren’t the only bunch streaming towards the guestlist queue, but I did notice we were the only all-Chinese bunch.
“Yes, we are on the guestlist,” replied my guy friend.
We were allowed to move on, and we joined the queue, albeit a bit bristled. When we finally reached the front, we had calmed down sufficiently and we gave our friend’s name to the female door hosts.
“Hi, we’re under XXX’s guestlist.”
The female door host with short light brown hair checked her clipboard, flipped the sheets and glared at us.
“XXX? Are you sure he’s on the guestlist??” Call me sensitive but I detected a hint of sarcasm and impatience. “Yes, that’s what we were told. XXX, “ we said.
She flipped the sheets again, and this time, the other female door host joined in to help her check. Both of them glared at us, and shot us a series of questions.
“Who is this XXX? Is he part of management? Who is this guy anyway? How do you even know him? We don’t know any XXX.”
“Ummm, OK, let me call my friend to check? We’re supposed to be on the guestlist,” says my girlfriend as she reaches into her bag to retrieve her mobile phone. Before she even has time to press the call button, the short-haired door host speaks up.
“Can you guys get out of the queue?”
“Huh???”
“Yes, can you guys get out of the queue?”
No please and no thank you. It wasn’t a request, it was a command. We were flabbergasted and pissed off.
Since when did it become OK to treat people like that? Whatever happened to basic courtesy? I mean, of course I know that I should move aside to let the other guests pass. But it wasn’t as though we’d been holding up the line for 20 minutes. It’d been less than 5 minutes!
We completely lost our mood to party so we decided to leave. The two female door hosts didn’t even have the basic courtesy to open up the velvet ropes to let us exit easily. We had to squeeze our way out through the queue, saying “excuse me” and “sorry, coming through” repeatedly. What was this, a walk of shame for not being on the guestlist? When we finally reach the end of the queue, we were fuming mad.
We called our friends who were on their way, and told them not to bother coming down, ever. We ranted and raved on our respective mobiles. “Babe, did you know that XXX didn’t manage to put us on the guestlist?? Do you know how crappily we were treated?? You guys have fun, we’re not going in already! We’re heading to Zouk!” I updated my Facebook status, warning all my friends never to head down to Stereolab, not unless they wanted to receive the same “royal” treatment. Within minutes, I get comments from my friends saying that they’d received similar treatment the last time they went.
At that moment, the manager approached us. Apparently, XXX had called the manager to ask why his friends couldn’t get in, and the manager correctly deduced that the pissed-off group standing by the cab queue was XXX’s friends.
The manager was very nice and explained that it was an internal miscommunication that resulted in us not being on the guestlist. He even invited us in for drinks on him, and told us that we could just breeze past the queue with him. However, we declined.
It wasn’t the fact that we weren’t on the guestlist. It was just the complete lack of basic courtesy that had pissed us off. Why did the two female door hosts have to be so rude? Did they have to inject sarcasm and disdain into every line they said? It wasn’t as though we were an inebriated bunch of rowdy people – it was just two girls and a guy. We weren’t even inappropriately dressed – dresses, heels, shirts, pants, the works.
Who would still have the mood to party after being treated that way? We told the manager that he didn’t have to apologise, cos it wasn’t his fault. He gave us his card and told us to call him whenever we were heading back. He would arrange everything for us.
Call me petty but I’m unlikely to head down again. “
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