I’ve been going to Ten Ren Tea House for a while now purely for 1 reason – they have the best pearl milk tea I’ve tasted in Melbourne. The milk tea is made with proper black tea and blended with ice and milk powder (probably that melamine kidney-stone causing stuff, but hey it tastes good) and they generally have fresh pearls which are soft and sweet.

However each time I go there, I will without fail have a ‘what the f***’ moment. I believe the management at Ten Ren have a special skill – hiring  retards. In fact, make that hiring retarded retards.

Now as an Asian, customer service is not very high on my list of things that I look for in a good restaurant. In fact, I could probably count the number of Chinese restaurants with good service and good food on one hand. Most of the places with good food tend to be run by some angry middle aged woman and a grandma chef who doesn’t speak English – I can handle that. Ten Ren however, seem to have the following recruitment and operating policies:

• 3 girls who have been in Australia for less than 1 week to operate 1 POS at all times. 
• 1 angry girl to make all the drinks in the store
• No English speaking staff, in fact, limited language skills are better – simple utterances of eh? oh… mmm, ahh will suffice
• 1 minute wait while the 3 girls at the POS confer and finally decide that the reason you’re standing in front of them is to place an order
• Minimum wait time of 5 minutes while ordering so that each girl at the POS can push all the possible buttons in an attempt to put through your drink as an order. After 5 minutes, they ask the angry drink girl for help and group together in fear that she will stab them to death with her bubble cup straws.

So my fellow readers, I am torn. Great product, absolutely disgraceful and ridiculous customer service…would you go back?

Btw, they increased the price of pearl milk tea to $4.00. Come on now, seriously…I could have 2 double cheeseburgers from Macca’s for $4! As if $3.50 wasn’t expensive enough for a drink that will be the cause of my diabetes in the future.