Institute of Service Excellence at SMU Director Caroline Lim said that the perception that customers in Singapore are overly demanding may not reflect the actual situation. Bad experiences are more vivid, and tend to stick in our mind, she said. Furthermore, our behaviour may be a result of the quick service here. "We may get our orders to the waiters using the fewest number of words, without exchanging pleasantries, unlike in the United States where servers and customers engage in small talk," said Ms Lim. The problem is that there is no established norm of how customers should behave in Singapore. We tend to pick up cues on how to act in an environment depending on how others act, she added, and this explains why a Singaporean who does not return his food tray in a fast-food outlet here does so in other countries where it is the norm.