SINGAPORE - A local TV chef's "creative compliment" of a Harvey Norman Singapore employee who attended to him in store has gone viral.

Writing on the electronics retail chain's Facebook page on Friday (Jan 1), Mr Shahrizal Salleh had crafted his post to sound like a complaint.

"I am utterly disappointed by this man. I never do this type of thing. It's not me. But everyone must know about this man," wrote Mr Shahrizal, who features regularly on local cooking and travel shows.

He then went on to describe how he met the employee, Mr Felix Chin, when he and his wife were shopping for a new refrigerator at Harvey Norman's Millennia Walk outlet.

Sharing that they had visited the store three days in a row due to various reasons, he was actually full of praise for Mr Chin's politeness, patience and exemplary customer service.

Mr Chin had even greeted them by name correctly on their third visit, said Mr Shahrizal, who finally bought the refrigerator on that visit.

"Now you can see why I'm utterly disappointed??"

The post, which came with the hashtag #sarcasm101, has since garnered more than 19,000 likes and has been shared over 4,500 times.

Netizens were impressed with Mr Shahrizal's sense of humour and the clever plot twist in his feel-good story.

"What a twist! I thought you (were going to) be one of those spoilt customers who complain too much in a desperate attempt to bring down the lives of those servicing the public," wrote user Chuanwei Foo.

"I personally feel that the public has been too generous with complaints and stingy with compliments. This is the kind of post that needs to go viral and spread. Kudos and thank you!"

Harvey Norman also responded to the post. It wrote: "Hi Shahrizal Salleh, thank you for taking the time out to leave a valued feedback. We will pass it on to our managers and management for their review. Have a wonderful day ahead!"

Other commenters backed up Mr Shahrizal's compliments with their own experiences of being served by Mr Chin.

Wrote Valene Lim: "He really deserves a good compliment. He served us twice on different occasions but still remembers us by our names. Really thumbs up on his service."

In a separate occasion last month, digital marketing specialist Pat Law recounted on Facebook her meeting with him while shopping for home appliances.

She praised Mr Chin, who lives in Batam and takes the ferry to work, for his patience and excellent product knowledge, and shared how he missed his last ferry ride because he had wanted to assist her.

Mr Shahrizal in his post also lamented how Singaporeans were too quick to air their grievances online.

"You know lah we Singaporeans anything also post online.... I was ready to jump on the pampered Singaporean bandwagon with my whiny complaint. But sadly this gentleman uncle Felix Chin didn't give me a single chance. How annoying," he concluded.