After the fateful viewing session of the “Casino Royale” at the exclusive movie theatre in town with 15 people including friends and colleagues previous Friday, this weekend saw me looking forward to rest and leisure in capital R and L. Watching movies are just for fun, but a movie where my colleague Florian can literally fall asleep in the hall, my friend Mishu can actually miss the bond's hitech gadgets and someone else yearn for the usual strong female character and grumble about it throughout the movie, fun can be calculated in degrees. The movie had left us feeling less than exhilarated and to pep ourselves up, I and my friend Mishu decided one good movie after a bad one was in order, so we both headed out to Gulshan club to see an Indian Movie. But with our luck, the movie was in bad taste and we ran out during interval and ended up in a coffee shop to remove the “bad movie buzzes” with cups of cappuccino and coffee mocha.
After last weekend’s interesting fiasco I decided studying and staying home was the key for this weekend treat. But thanks to my friends, I awoke to Rica’s phone call and got talked into a short road trip to Jamuna Resorts. We didn't regret it. For starters, she had a half day plan at the resort where she had booked a room for leisure where we would enjoy the resort view, have time to talk, relax and come back rejuvenated after the long 6 hours drive to and fro from the destination. So, we all started out in zest.
After traveling for a while, we decided to have impromptu breakfast at one of those tea-stalls on the roadside. As I had not had the privilege of ever doing that in Dhaka city I was all up for adventurous food. But, it seemed I was not adventurous enough because I ended up avoiding the breakfast which consisted of yummy egg omelete and paratha and stuck to the tea instead. My friend Farhana actually ended up with a questionable stomach afterwards, so you might want to reconsider doing that if you have a sensitive stomach.
The drive included listening to a wide range of songs, thanks to Miss Marium DJ, she was totally in sync with our moods along the way. We were happy, we were all excited about our trip and we were in the mood. It didn't last long.
The customer service at Jamuna resort was disturbingly spectacular. We had our long hairs flying with extreme disapproval and our colors rose with distaste when our "booked" room turned out to be a shower room instead or what looked like a shower room. It was wholly unexpected and non acceptable since we were being charged for Standard Rooms. And here I must say, it’s not the money but the audacity of the receptionist to think we could settle for it on the excuse that all the rooms were booked out. Whatever happened to honesty and customer service to corporate clients?
As this episode was similar to when we had gone to a Mexican restaurant in town and they served us Doritos when we had ordered for Nachos we decided that we would not accept this behaviour. Specially not when we were all in such high spirits. We decided that either customer service really needed to spruce up at certain places in the country or the receptionist really believed there are people who would stand for this kind of treatment.
It’s imperative to mention here that since we were all corporate people dealing mainly with clients and customers and we could all completely identify the sub-standard service we were being offered. So, we politely huffed and puffed and blew the place down, refused to take the room that was given to us in blind fate and went to Elenga resort for lunch instead which was really nice, especially the fish dishes.
The day proved to be a mixture of adventure, fun, realization, excitement and lots of laughter.
Moral of the trip: “Do not settle for less than what you truly think you deserve. You owe it to yourself to be treated nicely and justifiably.”
No comments:
Post a Comment