An epiphany at High Tea

Last month I had the opportunity to visit Singapore where I enjoyed the wonderful culinary delights that the island had to offer. On Christmas day we decided to go for High Tea at the Intercontinental Hotel for which we had to make a reservation in advance (we tried to get a reservation at many places but could only get one at Intercontinental) .

The holiday ambience at the Hotel restaurant was very nice and there was a steady stream of nicely dressed diners. After we got seated by the host we settled on what we wanted to order; a vegan tray with savory and sweet delicacies along with tea. We placed the order with the waitress and went back to our conversation. 30 minutes went by and there was no sign of our order. At that point another waitress showed up and asked if we were ready to order. We were a little stumped and mentioned to her that our order was already taken. She went in to check in. 10 minutes went by and this time yet another waitress showed up asking us if our order had been taken. We were surprised but told her that our order had already been taken. She said that there was no order in the system and she would go back to double check. Another 10 minutes later, the manager walked to us and asked  if our order was taken. We told her that she was the fourth person asking us the same question and that 50 minutes had passed since our conversation with the original waitress. The manager mentioned that she will fix it as soon as possible and apologized for the inconvenience. Just then the first waitress showed up and mentioned to the manager that she took the order from us but completely forgot to enter in the system. She turned really pale.

In the end we did get our order after 75 minutes.  We requested the manager to not penalize the first waitress. The manager was kind enough to give us the meal for free. The High Tea snacks were indeed very delicious. We did have a splendid time.


After this incident it got me thinking about how communication is so extremely important in our work lives (in-fact in any job and industry). I am sure you all will agree with me on the importance of communicating precisely on what each one is doing or not doing so that there is a clear understanding of the work being delivered to internal or external customers. 

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