Restaurant prioritizes foreigners even though I arrive 10 minutes earlier

That was a comment from a reader named trucduongtd for a VnExpress story about restaurants failing to adopt the first-come-first-serve principle.

The reader's story goes as:

"There is a great pho restaurant near my company which is packed every lunchtime. I usually come at 1 p.m. when the restaurant is relatively less crowded. Once, when I was waiting for my order, a group of 15 foreigners and guides arrived. The waiter then brought pho to the foreign guests first rather than me who had been waiting for more than 10 minutes before them. 

I asked the reason why I came first but was not served first? The waiter told me to wait, then kept me waiting for another 15 minutes. I was so annoyed that I stood up and was about to leave when the waiter immediately brought me my pho. It was the last time I came to that restaurant. No matter how good the food is, if the service is bad, I'll skip."

Other readers shared similar comments in the story, saying that Vietnamese customers are so easy-going that they do not give those working in the service industry the pressure to do their job more properly.

A reader nicknamed DOC said: "The service industry of other countries develop because customers demand fairness. Vietnamese customers are so easy-going, allowing poor services to exist. There are restaurants which are dirty, serve bad food, and with bad attitudes and yet they are still receiving regular customers. If you see something wrong and stay silent, you are simply aiding wrongdoings."

Another reader named IT_kid said: "I am a restaurant owner, building my restaurant from scratch. With more than a decade of working in the food and beverage industry, I have received countless complaints. What I did was apologize and then learn from such experiences. If everyone is sympathetic and reacts gently to a restaurant, it will be very difficult for them to get good service, because the restaurant has no pressure to improve services to retain customers. Tough customers are one of the reasons that help everyone enjoy the best services."