BY now most of you would probably have seen the infamous video clip making its rounds online of a Chinese woman going berserk in the Hong Kong International Airport after missing her flight to San Francisco.
I recently joined the ranks of the 5 million-or-so viewers who have sat through her wailing antics on YouTube over the last three weeks. It was rather entertaining - if somewhat disturbing - to watch a middle-aged woman behave like a 4-year-old who'd lost her Barbie doll.
Two things about this incident and its aftermath struck me the most.
Firstly: What on earth was she thinking? Granted, the woman could have had a wedding to attend, or some other very good reason for needing to get on board, but such behaviour is truly unwarranted.
Getting frustrated? That's fine, or at least arguably so. Collapsing onto the floor and screaming "The plane hasn't left yet!" 16 times, however, is completely uncalled for given the circumstances. You were late, madam - and besides, there's always the next flight!
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly: What would have happened if this scene had played out in Changi Airport instead? In my opinion, the Cathay Pacific airline staff were truly saints to have reacted the way they did, calmly reassuring Mrs. Tantrum that she and her family could always get on the next flight out. They also had to apologise to and compensate her for the embarrassment caused by the employee who filmed the entire scene, but that's another story.
On the other hand, online forums and video comments I saw offered plenty of other suggestions as to what another airport in the United States, for instance, would have done, many featuring the phrases "call security", "chokehold" and "straitjacket".
"The woman's a nut! If it weren't for Hong Kong Airport and the service it's renowned for I really wonder what would have happened to her," remarked one of my colleagues when I showed her the clip.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not suggesting for a moment that this kind of behaviour be condoned, but I do feel, however, that how service providers react in such situations says a lot about their professionalism and the standards they uphold.
There are probably many out there who think that airport staff at Changi would have done much the same as their Hong Kong counterparts. My friend certainly isn't one of them, though - not after his most recent post-holiday experience last May.
He had just gotten off his flight back to Singapore from Tokyo after a week-long vacation and what he described as "exemplary customer service". It was while he was clearing immigration at the arrival hall that he was welcomed back for the first time by a fellow countryman.
The "greeting" he received from the immigrations officer was a curt "Insert your passport fully."
He put it to me thus: "I well and truly felt then that I was back in Singapore."
Maybe my friend was just unlucky to have met the wrong person, or maybe the immigrations officer was having a bad day. We all have our reasons.
It seems to me, though, that we've been focusing too much on amusing ourselves over one woman's inappropriate display of emotion, when in fact the behaviour of other people in the video clip is perhaps what deserves more attention.