Worswick,
I earlier commented on one of your earlier
posts that we all need to get a lot further
under the fabric of a culture to have any
chance of understanding people.
Your Chinese restaurant story further
illustrates this. I am sure (maybe not)
that this is how you you have generalized
an entire ethnic group. I know a little
about Chinese restaurants in America
myself.
Growing up, my friends and I would often
go to Chinese restaurants. They were pretty
much the same kind of thing but we had a
favorite that we went to for years. The
waiters were even somewhat as you describe,
and our favorite place had a particularly
dour guy that often waited on us. But, we
were kids, which meant that we usually had
too much to say and too often showed it.
Worswick, you said you wait until they are
ten feet away from the table and call them
back. Very funny, here were a few of our
tricks.
We called our waiter "Larry". For the years
we went to this restaurant, others picked
up the name "Larry", and he eventually
reconciled himself to answering to this
name. His english was poor and we made fun
of it. We teased him about the food, (was
soya sauce made from bugs? Is the chicken
really cat? Does your family eat dogs?),
it was as relentless as it was repetitive.
Of course, we chose the name "Larry",
because he had trouble pronouncing it
himself. Throughout, he remained
inscrutable. He did little to fight back,
he just gave us lousy service.
After our school years, we all went our
separate ways including "Larry". I
finally grew up and realized how badly
we and many people like us had treated him.
"Larry", of course, was not his real name,
we didn't want to use his "foreign" name.
This only scratches the surface of how badly we
treated him, and I have seen this same scenario
many times in many places in America and it
continues today. If you haven't seen this you
haven't been out much.
If I ran into "Larry" today I would apologize
to him for the abuse. I would not expect his
forgiveness although it would sure help my guilt.
Oh, by the way, our group of friends were multi-
cultural, with me being ethnic Chinese, born in
North America, and wanting to be "Western" like
my friends.DS
PS: Next on Jerry Springer, Chinese Waiters with
guest Clark Worswick on "My patrons keep telling
lousy jokes".
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