wayfaringwordhack: (Default)
[personal profile] wayfaringwordhack
... and other weird tales of the city.

At Gustimmo di Roma, whether you buy a cone or a cup, you are required to take three flavors.  Not three scoops of the same flavor, not one scoop of lime sorbet and two of yoghurt.  No, you must choose THREE different flavors and your wishes, wants, and cravings as a customer matter not a whit.

I wanted to walk away from such a control-freak sales approach, but I had tasted of their yoghurt and had to have some. I caved.

But I won't go back, no matter how they exhort me to with the customer-friendly closing on their receipts:

Thank you
Hope to see you again.
Thank you
Please come again.

Another odd, "we must do it this way" encounter we had was at the movie theater.*  We asked the cashier to see a paper with a synopsis of the movies because we had no idea what any of them were about.

"We have one," he said, "but we aren't allowed to show it to you."  o.O  

After I incredulously asked him why not and then began to question him intensively about the films, he grudgingly and sneakily pulled it out of his desk and put it on the counter for us to read.

Is this common practice anywhere else?

This isn't really a tale, just an observation about the hotel where we are staying.  The place is very nice, chic in some respects, but when it comes to breakfasts (an all you can eat affair), they drop the ball in my opinion.

The British history of Singapore is a given, so the baked beans and wieners for breakfast are understandable, but pasta and pizza? I wouldn't complain, as it were, if there were a plethora of other choices, but there aren't.  You can have toast--with butter, strawberry jam, and peanut butter--and two types of cereal. Some mornings, you may get a pale, plasticky thing they call quiche (with diced ham) or scrambled eggs (without).  This morning, they actually put out a bowl of canned fruit salad and nice potatoes.  Perhaps there is hope that our fourth and final morning will be something slightly tastier.
_____________

* We went to see Daybreakers.  I will refrain from writing a review of the movie, but my review of the theater is this: The tickets were cheap, very cheap, and when we went into the dinky theater, with the smallish screen perched way up high, I thought I knew why.  It wasn't until the film started at eardrum shattering volume and the other movie-goers began shouting and ripping open their treats with zero respect for others that I began to grasp why they might need to entice viewers with attractive prices.

Date: 7 Feb 2010 11:51 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] frigg.livejournal.com
Okay, the ice-cream situation was just weird.

Date: 7 Feb 2010 12:01 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mnfaure.livejournal.com
I know! I don't know why I didn't just tell them to keep their ice cream if they were going to have such silly impositions.

Date: 7 Feb 2010 12:03 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] frigg.livejournal.com
*lol*
Probably because there was no way you were prepared for something like that to happen.

Date: 7 Feb 2010 12:32 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mnfaure.livejournal.com
Yes, it does tend to take one by surprise.

Date: 7 Feb 2010 08:54 pm (UTC)
pjthompson: (Default)
From: [personal profile] pjthompson
Dude, pizza for breakfast is my favorite, especially if it's cold and just out of the fridge. Kowabonga.

Date: 8 Feb 2010 12:10 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mnfaure.livejournal.com
Yeah, the pizza doesn't really shock me (except that it looked gross); it was the pasta that I found sketchy. :P

Date: 8 Feb 2010 01:09 am (UTC)
pjthompson: (Default)
From: [personal profile] pjthompson
Not my idea of breakfast, but in a country that eats noodles for all three meals probably not such a stretch.

Date: 8 Feb 2010 01:55 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mnfaure.livejournal.com
*nods* That's what I thought about the noodles, too, except they were fat shell noodles with a wonky-looking tomato sauce.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the corn. They serve canned corn, too.

Date: 8 Feb 2010 03:23 am (UTC)
pjthompson: (Default)
From: [personal profile] pjthompson
Okay, ewww.

Date: 8 Feb 2010 01:59 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mnfaure.livejournal.com
hehe. Glad you agree. On the survey I filled out this morning concerning customer satisfaction, I requested better breakfasts. :P

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