STRAIGHT TO the point now: Sanitation is a major issue at Xtremely Xpresso in Marquee Mall.
August 9, around 5 p.m., I chanced upon the whole Angeles City Council doing a post-session bonding at the coffeeshop-resto.
After the rudimentary greetings and handshakes, the good councilor Jay Sangil motioned me to a corner for some catch-ups in the local scene, along with Sun-Star Pampanga’s Rey Navales.
The now-three-termer Susing ordered pizza and iced tea for us. Lost in the fun of conversation, I had finished three slices of the pizza and sipped three fourths of my glass of iced tea when I noticed a strip of white something near stuck inside my glass.
With the straw, I scraped it off and there in my iced tea floated fibers of tissue paper. Damned! I called the server and the counter girl to showed them the ghastly find.
“Sir, we’ll give you another glass of iced tea.”
What? And get more tissue paper from God knows where into my digestive system? Explain this now.
“Sir, it could be some whipped cream…”
Since when did whipped cream made into an ingredient for iced tea, stupid? “Maybe, Sir, the glass was used for whipped cream earlier.” So you don’t wash your glasses, doubly stupid!
I phoned Marquee Mall PR lady Dani Guiwan and reported the developing case of the tissue paper in a glass of iced tea. She said she’d call the Xtremely Xpresso manager to explain.
I summoned the chair of the council committee on health, the Honorable Alex Indiongco, and showed him the “infected” glass of iced tea. He asked for the manager.
The manager came and met with us – after first getting a briefing from his staff. So, what can you say about this, asked Councilor Alex.
“Pasensiya na po.” The manager was more irritated than sorry. So that’s all there is to it?
I ingested fibers from a tissue paper only some idiot of dishwasher knows where it came from and a stupidly insincere “pasensiya na po” is all I got.
No, I do not think in terms of compensation, monetary or otherwise for this. But I believe some action is needed to make Xtremely Xpresso answer for this clear lapse in sanitation.
So what will the Marquee Mall management do about this? Just let go of it as an isolated incident? Where lies corporate responsibility toward consumer protection here?
So the city council itself was witness to this breach in the city sanitary code. So what will it do? Easily forget it and come again to Xtremely Xpresso after its Tuesday session for its bonding?
So what will the city sanitation office, the city health office do about this? Assume that it did not happen, in the absence of an official complaint – subscribed and notarized – from any complainant?
And the city mayor shall go on holding his monthly treat to the local media there.
So I just have to write about it and damn Xtremely Xpresso for its unsanitary ways. Pulkirya! As my dearly departed grandmother would have said.
Yeah, well named is this Xtremely Xpresso – XX, no pornographic allusion there, but of the criminal way: double cross. Simply meaning, shitting their customers.
