Singapore rated in bottom 10 of world’s most courteous cities

I won­der how the Straits Times will spin THIS lit­tle snippet.

It’s just not in our nature to be smi­ley and friendly to strangers. When credit card com­pa­nies and insur­ance com­pa­nies do “tout­ing” on the streets, we avoid them like a plague by walk­ing around them with a big gap.

“Sin­ga­pore beats Kuala Lumpur in cour­tesy sur­vey” will be the ST headline.

New York is the most cour­te­ous? I love the city but cour­tesy is not one of it’s most endear­ing aspects!

no won­der got the smile sin­ga­pore campaign.

#1 NY ? Pfft !

i think its true though. because i’ve over­heard like tourists say­ing how impo­lite the shop assis­stants are in shop­ping malls in sin­ga­pore and that they don’t go way out to serve you.

Even the infa­mously unfriendly Parisians rank higher than us!

Well, it makes me won­der.… that two thirds of the rud­est coun­tries are Asian coun­tries, whereas all the top cour­te­ous coun­tries are Euro­pean coun­tries! Nev­er­the­less, at least we know that in S’pore, we are mak­ing efforts to up our cus­tomer ser­vice (eg: GEMS). It helps being in an edu­cated soci­ety whereby we know that cus­tomer service/courtesy goes a lll­loooonnnnngggg way. But I do hope S’poreans dun just are cour­te­ous when they are paid in their jobs to do so etc…

NY #1? That sounds weird.. but I do agree that Sin­ga­pore­ans are kindda rude..

If your tire blows in the ecp, do you notice, no one ever stops to help you? If some­one gets accosted, do you notice, no one ever sees any­thing and all of them dont want to get involved –In the mrt do you also notice, when­ever an elderly or preg­nant woman makes an appear­ance, every­one seems to oblivious.

No sin­gapohre­ans are not rude, we are all sim­ply uniquely singapohrean

when is sin­ga­pore a first world nation?

new york city is the worst city i have been to.. peo­ple there are ten times worse then SG.. yet they are #1..

spain is worse then sg.. peo­ple are steal­ing, NON stop

sin­ga­pore­ans are rude, i don’t deny.. but we are bet­ter than these 2 cities i have been to..

auck­land should be #1

this sur­vey means noth­ing to me..

smile on SG

The sur­vey is RUBBISH!

NY is def­i­nitely not the friend­liest city, so that sur­vey is garbage. How­ever, Sin­ga­pore­ans are very rude. They are also very racist. If you are of Indian ori­gin the shop­keep­ers will some­time curse at you if you try to bar­gain. They also do this in Hong Kong. But in gen­eral, the peo­ple are not friendly. My par­ents and I used to go there sev­eral times when we were grow­ing up. The coun­try was then a mecca for elec­tron­ics shop­ping. I have no inten­tion of going there again unless it’s for busi­ness. — sunny

I’m doing this recent project on mak­ing ser­vice a sin­ga­porean trade­mark for my school project work. when i went out to orchard to ask for some sur­veys for this, most of the tourists were so impo­lite. The asian tourists seemed more hum­ble in that sense.The main ques­tion here,” Is the GEMS cam­paign in Sin­ga­pore fea­si­ble since it didnt help that Sin­ga­pore got 30th posi­tion?” Anyway,more impor­tantly, how can we help improve the ser­vice stan­dards here?

i have just expe­ri­enced sin­ga­pore rud­ness taken to a new level,i am from syd­ney and i would have no objec­tions help­ing some­one with direc­tions if i was approached. my asian trav­el­ling part­ner approached 2 peo­ple in sin­ga­pore this week for direc­tions and both of them turned there back ‚held there hands up and walked off. shop keep­ers are short with any request you have and the hotel recep­tion staff of a major hotel your air­line lists as one to use for stop overs have a poor under­stand­ing of the eng­lish language,singapore may have advanced over the years in many areas but it is stuck in the 60’s when it comes to being civil to any­one other than a singaporean

That’s no news for the locals. We get a taste of our own med­i­cine from our very own peo­ple, everywhere.

Shop­ping malls, carparks, the HDB and Condo lifts, the MRT sta­tions. You name it, we kena it.

Yea, Sin­ga­pore­ans are rude and unfriendly. When they speak, you feel no warmth at all. Very bor­ing peo­ple. The coun­try may be orderly and clean but it’s bor­ing nonetheless.

I resolve this year to be warm and inter­est­ing, just for you, justbeen.

I don’t think Sin­ga­pore­ans are that rude over­all … but, what annoys the hell out of me is

- Every­one scram­bling to get into the MRT sta­tion lift (or the MRT train) first, even if they are able-bodied adults and the oth­ers are chil­dren, preg­nant or dis­abled. Prac­ti­cally only the ang mos will will­ingly wait for their turn.

- As men­tioned above, very few peo­ple give up their seats in the MRT for anyone.

The sur­vey was not about how friendly peo­ple were, it was about cour­tesy!
Also, I wouldn’t brand all Sin­ga­pore­ans the same, but in my expe­ri­ence from liv­ing here for the last year and a half, there seems to be no com­mon cour­tesy here!!
Peo­ple aim for you when you are walk­ing in a straight line, then tend to get in your way. Then when they do get in your way they stop right in front of you…! I have, on a numer­ous amount of times, almost been hit by swing­ing arms…some don’t seem to be aware of their surroundings.

Also, I always travel on the MRT and every sin­gle time, I see uncle & aun­ties snot­ting every­where, sneez­ing, snort­ing, they don’t cover their mouths — it’s sick. No won­der Sing has a bug all year round! Let’s start cov­er­ing our mouths, that would be a good start lah!

I agree that most Sin­ga­pore­ans are not friendly at all. The good thing though, is they don’t have bad atti­tudes and there is no fear here, com­pared to the UK, or the US!

I’d be happy to set­tle for that anyday!