All the China Ladies, all the China ladies... Oh uh Oh..

I'm still trying to get the new Cheerful China lady at McCafe to remember my (daily) order. The previous Chillax Malay Dude (and before that, the Indian lady from JB) could, and when they see me approaching from far away every morning, they would already start making my drink so when I get to the counter, I just have to pick it up. Cheerful China Lady has served me for at least 2 weeks now, but she hasn't gotten into the rhythm yet. She is still asking me today whether I'm having the drink here or to go.

There must be something I can do to speed this up. Maybe I need to make a deeper impression on her. For Chillax Malay Dude, I didn’t need to do anything because he is the hip-hop “bro, whassup” type and was naturally chummy with all regulars so we bonded quickly. As for the Indian Lady from JB, she only really became chummy with me when I brought up the fact that I’m from JB too. I have NO idea why and how the topic of JB even came up.

So I guess I need to find something in common with Cheerful China Lady. Should I start ordering coffee in (my bad) Mandarin? How do you say skinny flat white in Chinese? Is it “shou bien bai”? No, that sounds wrong – but I’m sure it will be memorable.

Anyway, I’ll work on that. Speaking of China ladies, I met a cashier this morning whom I thought was quite superb. I was trying to pay for petrol at Esso station and she ABSOLUTELY REFUSES to let me pay full price. She asked me what cards I have and she went through with me the entire content of my wallet to check if I have any credit card that qualifies me for a discount. When we discovered none, she insisted I sign up for the Esso Smile card. I told her I’m rushing for time (I’m an hour late for work and my entire wallet content is on the counter), she immediately whipped up a card out of nowhere and start punching in the 5% discount, telling me I can fill up the form another time and that she hate to see me “lose out”. In that 10 seconds while she was processing my payment, she starts shooting off to me all the products by the counter that were on discount – bird’s nest, chicken essence, chocolates, gums, etc. When I say I don't eat these sorts of things, she went on to vouchers, magazines, etc. etc. By the time I left the counter, I was INFORMATION OVERLOAD – and mind you, everything was conducted in CHINESE. My poor head. That said, I work for a retail company so I do really appreciate a good service staff when I see one.