Service? Singapore still has a long way to go

It would otherwise be a cheerful, happy, fair-weather Sunday afternoon until my shocking encounter at Margaret Drive Food Centre less than an hour ago.

I joined Chup's regular tennis kakis today for lunch. The Food Centre serves the most wonderful and cheap Fishball Mee Pok for an unbelieavable $2! There were at least 8 crunchy fresh succulent fishballs in one serving.

We were a group of 9 plus 1 infant seated on 2 makeshift tables at the pavement of the Food Centre facing the Church. We also ordered Yiu Char Kwey, Carrot Cake, Dumpling Soup, Rice with stirfry beef and Fish Slice bee hoon. As dessert, we ordered a mix of coffee and tea siu tai (meaning less sweet). It was here that a great error had been commited!

A thin-built, dark man came over and asked us in mandarin. Donned in checkered red shirt and shorts with silver earring on his right ear. He is probably in his 40's.

Man: Are you all done?
Us : (Looking puzzled) Not really...
Man: You are using my table you know. So are you done?
Can't you see you are using my table? Who's gonna clear the table?
SH : Ok, we will clear after we finish.
Man: Who's gonna clean the table?
SH : No problem, we will clean your table too.
Man: (obviously not satisfied with the answer)
Please move away. We are doing business here you know.
How can you use our table like that?
Move! Move! I want to keep the table.
(Flabbergasted, we all started shifting our food to another table while the angry man folded the table and stacked away all the chairs we were sitting on, giving us the killer stare everynow and then)

Apparently the 2 tables we were using belong to two separate drink stalls, each from 2 corners of the food centre. We had ordered our coffee from one of the table owners, making the other table owner (yes, that's the angry man) very upset.

Competition had made this man so angry and hostile. But are innocent customers to blame for his bitterness? Couldn't he have put it more gentlemanly? It's not as if he had many customers waiting for tables that we had accidentally occupy. Then again, it was probably due to his lack of business that he was even more angry.

.... the one who still couldn't believe what just happened