An altercation occurred at Playmade Waterway Point on the night of Apr. 21, after the store saw a surge in orders amounting to about 600 cups via delivery alone.

Earlier in the day, the Covid-19 Multi-Ministry Taskforce (MTF) tightened restrictions on F&B outlets, leading to the closure of bubble tea stores from 11:59pm.

Pressure and frustration

Tensions ran high as both delivery riders and F&B staff struggled to fulfil the orders.

In addition to their Facebook update, Playmade has also released a separate statement on the incident.

During this period, the bubble tea store said, a Grab driver had expressed his impatience at one of the staff, and "repeatedly demanded" to know how long he would have to wait.

Under pressure and out of frustration, the staff responded that it would be "a f****** long” wait if he had to give an estimate.

According to Playmade, the driver then reacted angrily and asked for an apology.

The staff and his colleagues reportedly apologised to the driver, while other customers tried to defuse the situation.

The staff has since been counselled, and is reported to be in "deep remorse" over his choice of words.

In their statement, Playmade apologised to the Grab driver, as well as to everyone else who was inconvenienced by the incident.

A 38-year-old man was arrested or public nuisance in relation to the incident.

The store added that they were not the party who had made the police report.

You can watch the video on the incident here.

Playmade's statement in full:

“Following the announcement of stricter circuit breaker measures yesterday requiring all bubble tea shops to be shut, our outlet at Waterway Point in Punggol Central saw a huge surge in demand both at the store and through our e-commerce platform with Grab.

Our team worked tirelessly to serve customers who queued up at our outlet as well as placed orders online. At one point at around 8pm, our staff pressed the pause button on the Grab device to stop further online orders from coming in. Unknown to us, there were already more than a hundred orders in the system waiting to be matched with Grab drivers, as well as orders that would continue to be matched in the one or two minutes after the system was paused.

During this hectic period, while long queues were building up at our store, a Grab driver expressed his impatience at one of our staff and repeatedly demanded to know how long he would have to wait. Under pressure and out of frustration, our staff responded that if he had to give an estimate, it would be “a f****** long” wait. The driver reacted angrily and asked our staff for an apology.

Our staff and other colleagues apologised to him and several of them and other customers tried to defuse the situation. The video of the visibly upset Grab driver confronting and threatening our staff had gone viral on social media. Contrary to social media chatter, Playmade was not the party that reported the incident to the police.

We have counselled our staff and he is in deep remorse over his uncouth choice of adjective. We and our staff sincerely apologise to the Grab driver, our customers and other Grab drivers who were inconvenienced by yesterday’s incident.

Playmade remains very appreciative of all Grab drivers who are among the frontline heroes in our fight against Covid-19, putting their health at risk to deliver food and beverages to households all over Singapore during this challenging time.

Post circuit-breaker period, Playmade will continue to operate omnichannel customer touchpoints and delivery as we want to be able to offer timely service to our customers whenever they need it, wherever they may be.”

Top image via messaging platforms, Playmade's Facebook page