I have been a resident of Singapore for almost 18 years and have never seen service here as bad as it has been for the past two to three years.

Why do establishments put foreign workers who do not have even elementary grasp of English in the frontline?

My wife is a non-Chinese Singaporean. We both have become increasingly frustrated in ordering the simplest of things at restaurants and supermarkets.

But what happened on the first weekend of this month was just too much to take. We were at a supermarket in Tampines and tried to order 1.5kg of live prawns.

Simple enough, one would think. The man who attended to us spoke no English. In fact, he could not decipher our request even when we wrote it down for him.

He went from 3kg to 2kg and everything in between. Finally, a co-worker assisted him and we thought that was it. But he proceeded to weigh the prawns along with copious amounts of water. At $21 a kilo, I didn't fancy paying for water. Once again there were several minutes of dialogue and gesturing just to get him to drain the water.

Meanwhile, a crowd of agitated customers had gathered. Finally he got the message and drained the water.

Then, he started to weigh in dead prawns. Back to several more minutes of trying to make him understand I was paying for live ones.

I never get this sort of disgraceful service when I am at the same supermarket's outlet nearer to the city. The answer

is simple: Many expatriates frequent that place and the management realises the counter staff need to communicate in English.

Obviously it does not care about the frustrations of heartlanders when its service staff do not speak English.

Don't think I am picking on this supermarket - the list of poor service providers is extremely long. It just happens that this was my latest frustration.

Dr Richard Martorano