It's all got to do with management, or rather, leadership, I believe. The restaurant business is one of the best examples of this point.
1. My local fast food joints
I have, in the past year, investigated all the numerous fast food joints in town, (I also skip and whistle past the TFP Health and Fitness thread, I might add) and have noticed that, while the same type of teenagers and young adults are working at these places, their level of courtesy and quality of service is vastly different. McDonalds, Wendy's and sometimes Burger King are abissmal in how they treat customers - no smiles or "Welcome to ...., can I take your order?", no thank yous upon delivering your order, which may or may not be correct in its assemblege. On the other end of the spectrum are Taco Bell (best) and Sonic; in both I get the most polite of responses from their staff and almost always correctness in my order. In between is Krystal, and while they get my order right, sometimes the brusk nature of one or two of their staff is a bit much, they always have a "welcome" and "thank you" to give, even if it is a bit "plain spoken", so to speak.
It has to be how these kids are trained and how much true customer service is or is not modeled by their managers.
2. Local Chain restaurant
About 25 years ago, there was a restaurant close to me named "The Cooker", and it was
the place to go for either dinner or lunch with friends (sort of like an Applebys.) The atmosphere was great, service was excellent, food was even better (their rolls were heavenly!) Their servers made decent money and often stayed and worked there for quite a while, which is not the norm for food service, I've been told. Their policy was to please the customer - once I ordered broccoli casserole, and when the manager came to ask how our food was, I mentioned to him all was well except my broccoli tasted like non-stick cooking spray. He apologised profusely, asked what other vegetable I might like (free), and took off the price of the offending item from my bill. Another time I had ordered a glass of the house wine, and when the manager made his usual trip to our table and asked if I enjoyed my meal and wine, I told him all was wonderful except that I didn't like the house wine as much as I liked the other white on his winelist. He took off the price of the wine from my bill, with me trying to get him not to. I mean, it was my choice to order it, it wasn't their fault. He did it anyway.
Needless to say, the Cooker restaurants everywhere had people lined up to get inside them. That is, until the original owners sold to another company. After that, none of my friends would even countenance going to the Cooker! It was awful! A few years later, they all folded, one by one.
(edited to add: I am not a babe that I would warrant such service, believe me!
)
Management matters, and good leadership means good business. Obviously the postal workers in Ng's situation do not have good managers/leaders.
Side question - does anyone know how much money postal workers make? Since their jobs are often civil service jobs, can they be fired for incompetence?