This is a (terrible) picture of the Starbucks near my office that I frequent most often.
I've been coming to this Starbucks for about 18 months now, and I'm ashamed to admit it, but earlier this week, I noticed something for the first time. I was walking up to one of the doors and a man in a wheelchair was coming out. The door I was going towards has a step outside of it, so I paused for a minute as this guy "hopped" the step in his wheelchair and went along. Then I realized - all the doors only have steps.. there are no ramps. It has no wheelchair accessibility.
Singapore obviously has a reputation for being incredibly rules-driven, and in many ways that is absolutely a well-deserved sentiment. But in other ways - no OSHA, HIPAA, or ADA - it is surprising how many things are unregulated!
Something else that is different at Starbucks? They don't have canisters of milk laid out for people to help themselves to. When you order coffee, if you want milk, you tell the cashier. They will always ask "hot milk or cold milk?" which also seems odd to me.
One more note about Starbucks - I have a Starbucks card in three territories (US, Singapore, and Malaysia) but none of them are linked together because the global business model is not really a global business model. Anyway, that is all fine by me, except that my gold status at Starbucks in the US has expired, and even after I wrote to customer service, they declined my request to keep it active!!!
Notice anything?
Singapore obviously has a reputation for being incredibly rules-driven, and in many ways that is absolutely a well-deserved sentiment. But in other ways - no OSHA, HIPAA, or ADA - it is surprising how many things are unregulated!
Something else that is different at Starbucks? They don't have canisters of milk laid out for people to help themselves to. When you order coffee, if you want milk, you tell the cashier. They will always ask "hot milk or cold milk?" which also seems odd to me.
One more note about Starbucks - I have a Starbucks card in three territories (US, Singapore, and Malaysia) but none of them are linked together because the global business model is not really a global business model. Anyway, that is all fine by me, except that my gold status at Starbucks in the US has expired, and even after I wrote to customer service, they declined my request to keep it active!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment