This Time, It’s A Video That’s Catching Hate From Netizens
SMRT and PR gaffes. Name a more iconic duo.
Go ahead, we’ll wait.
But don’t take too long, or they would have made another boo-boo in the meantime.
So what offering from the much-maligned company are Singapore’s netizens flaming this time?
Well, it’s a 4-minute film that depicts a day in the life of an SMRT engineer. At press time, it had received nearly 200,000 views.
But it’s not any ordinary day. This is a day where the MRT breaks down and…
Ok, it’s an ordinary day.
The video depicts a father with “dedication and responsibility”. He “responds to his call of duty” on a Very Bad Day Indeed.
Meet Ah Hao, Ah Girl And Ah Ma
The video begins with Ah Hao on an SMRT bus (naturally), going to pick up his daughter up from school.
Unfortunately, “SMRT TRAINS” chose that very moment to slide into his DMs.
Ah Hao then delegates the task of picking up his daughter to his elderly mother, who is more than meets the eye (more on that later).
In her haste to pick up her granddaughter, Ah Ma falls over in her best recreation of every Mediacorp drama ever.
Ah Hao knows nothing of this, as he has rushed to work.
Shots of his crew hard at work are juxtaposed with some of the most eye-rollingest Singaporeans ever.
Emerging from the dark and musky tunnels caked in dirt and grime, Ah Hao is immediately lynched by an angry mob.
Ok, not really.
But an especially irate man voice concerns about his own daughter’s safety, drawing a parallel to Ah Hao’s plight.
Ah Hao is stunned and speechless until his supervisor and an SMRT customer service staff save the day by placating the passenger.
Upon hearing the fate of Ah Hao’s daughter, his supervisor lets him off early.
Ah Hao leaves Changi Airport, where the train fault occurred, and reaches a heartland neighbourhood in no time.
Must have taken the MRT. We kid.
In the neighbourhood, he frantically searches for his daughter.
Finally, he spots her and Ah Ma, and the trio are united.
As it turns out, Ah Girl had just run to a cake shop to spend a week’s allowance on a slice of cake for her dad’s birthday.
Happily reunited, the family walks off into the sunset as a LRT flies lazily overhead.
Seems like a pretty cookie-cutter our-staff-are-humans-too piece, but we at MustShareNews think that there is a hidden meaning to it.
We theorise that …
The mother is an allegory of SMRT
That’s right.
The kindly old lady who stumbles over herself symbolises the many failings of SMRT.
The old lady tried her best but didn’t succeed, despite her best intentions.
But it’s all OK, because things work themselves out in the end.
While this is a neat little connection, netizens have blasted SMRT for being wide off the mark — yet again.
A “cheap shot”
Online critics are largely united in their disapproval of the video’s message.
Among the accusations lobbed at SMRT are allegations of taking “cheap shots” and aiming for low hanging fruit:
Another commenter pointed out that many staff of other companies get affected by train service disruptions too:
Not that SMRT doesn’t have its share of defenders.
A user thanked the dedication of the train operator’s staff for “steadily improving over (the) past 5 years”.
However — just like Ah Ma — there is a bit more to the tale.
In the second most shocking twist of the day, the above commenter has been discovered to work for SMRT.
Ownself praise ownself indeed.
Source
A message gone awry
One thing has remained clear from all this: SMRT got the message wrong.
The video, while heartfelt and touching, doesn’t address public dissatisfaction with SMRT’s high management.
We’ve always supported SMRT staff.
It’s the management that we don’t get.
The entire MustShareNews team applauds the hard work of SMRT ground staff, who get us to work everyday.
Featured image via Facebook.
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