22. The Worst (and Scariest) Driver Ever

This happened some time back in Phu Quoc, Vietnam, during an audit mission.

As we exited the airport, we identified the airport representative holding the resort's signage. When we approached her, she simply asked, "What's your name?" without any warm welcome or greeting. She then phoned the driver, who was "waiting somewhere nearby".  After a few minutes' wait in silence, the driver appeared from afar and strolled leisurely towards us - with absolutely no sense of urgency at all.

The driver was scruffy looking and bore no smile too. His colleague had to prompt him to help with the bags. As we got into the parked vehicle, the airport representative informed us that the journey would take 45 minutes and gave us the Wi-Fi password for the car. She then said bye and left, presumably back to the arrival hall to await other guests on later flights.

As the car pulled away, we realised we could not connect to the Wi-Fi or rather, there was no network detected. When we asked if there was Wi-Fi in the car, the driver said nothing but smirked and did a hand gesture to indicate "no". 

Right then, the employee then started to hum a tune loudly which made us feel rather uncomfortable. To make matter worse, he would cast odd glances at us via the rear view mirror from time to time. At first, we just ignored the driver and his weird antics, but when he started to speed at more than 75km/h along the narrow countryside roads with incoming traffic, we started to get really uncomfortable.

I asked him to slow down which he didn't seem too happy about. Next, he started to yawn as wide as one could see his tonsils, making much noise as he did so. He kept repeating it - to a total of seven times throughout the remaining of the dreary journey. We literally breathed a sigh of relief when the car pulled up to the hotel. What a ride!

Post-stay note: The driver was let go the following week not only because of the feedback, but he was also caught stealing some items from the General Manager's car. 


Reflective thoughts: Your team is as strong as your weakest link - be it a service touch point, a process or a colleague. Review what's yours and discuss how you can improve. What are some hiring criteria that you/your company never compromises on? 

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