Raising the bar on good service

Recently, a bar with a difference has been set up in China.

Patrons are invited to vent their frustrations and anger on the bar staff. Not in any verbal sense of the word, either, but physically. Punch them, kick them, what you will; for a price the staff will even dress up like your boss for a nice relaxing spot of superior-bashing.

I'd have thought this was a hoax if not for the fact that Today, the Straits Times and the New Paper all reported this story. Ignoring for the moment the possibility that these three eminent publications obtained their information from an identical rumour-mongerer, this puts the veracity of this story above that of the major news stories of the day, including the war in Lebanon and the occurence of the National Day Parade.

Some might lament the culture which has created the need for such an establishment; the reserved culture in the workplace so characteristic of Asian countries, the failure of alcohol alone in resolving such issues (which is a grave failure indeed), the crackdown on violence against sex workers, the inaccesibility and harsh penalties for drug usage. The usual recourses to workplace stress, the conventional cathartic remedies, are denied to the worker by law or social stigma; the service industry now has to provide not only a listening ear to drunken banal confidences, a stomach for abuse and rudeness, but also a nose to be broken in the interests of good customer service.

However, I believe this is, on the contrary, a shining example of entrepeneurship that the good businessmen of Singapore may emulate. What examples have been provided to us of that coy goddess the government has coined "entrepeneurship" and encouraged Singaporeans to worship and burn incense to? Breadtalk, 77th street, Stikfas. What the hell's so entrepeneurial about these businesses? Sure, they have taken risks, they have gone where no Singaporean has gone before, but when it comes down to it, they don't redefine the business arena, they don't reinterpret cultural or social practices, they don't change the way we live. They sell bread, clothes, toys, just like what generations of merchants have done before, albeit on a larger and more noticeable scale, and with larger and more noticeable revenue, consequently with larger and more noticeable government plaudits.

This bar in China, however, turns the business world on its head. While other businesses make money out of creating wants in consumers by advertising and branding, which are, in a sense, eminently unproductive, wasteful and deceiving activities; this particular bar satisfies the needs of the dissatisfied by providing a legal avenue for controlled violence which might otherwise spill into the streets, the home and the workplace with messy, unproductive and rather undesirable results.

This bar also provides an interesting twist on the age-old business game. Those in the retail business say to the customer: give me your money or we'll make you look unfashionable. Those in the robbery business say: give me your money or we'll beat me up. This bar says: give me your money and you can beat us up. A thug who turns the other cheek? If somebody's going to ask you for your money anyway this is a very civilised way of doing it, don't you think?

I wait in anticipation for this concept to come to Singapore. Meanwhile, I am slack-jawed in admiration at the persuasive skills of their recruiting department; they are even better at their job than the SAF recruiters and that is saying something indeed.