I can't remember if I told this story here before because I've told it a lot, but there was one evening my roommate and I went to the UPS store to mail some textbooks back, and right next to the store was a little Chinese food place. I hadn't eaten much that day and neither of us had plans for dinner so I said "Hey look, let's get Chinese food for dinner." Which is a reasonable way to spend $7 for a quick bite to eat.
It was a quiet Tuesday night, a bit rainy, and we were the only customers in the place. We order some lo mein, fried rice, and an egg roll and sit down to wait at a booth in the corner.
A few minutes go by and a woman enters the restaurant. She is flustered and the words she is saying make very little coherent sense but she seems to think that my Caucasian roommate and I, sitting at a table in our street clothes, are employees of the Chinese restaurant. She asks "where's y'all's restroom?" So I point toward the back, and she proceeds to walk to the counter as if she's going to place an order, then walks back over to us asking again where the restroom is, so I point and say aloud that it's in the back.
This woman is so grateful to me for the valuable information that I provided her with that she says she's going to buy me a drink (remember, we are in a Chinese fast food restaurant), proceeds to take her debit card out of her purse and throws it on the empty table beside where my roommate and I are sitting, and then runs off to the bathroom.
My roommate and I look at each other in confusion. We still haven't gotten our food yet because this all happened in the span of about 90 seconds. In the background we can hear this woman pounding on the bathroom door "Is somebody in here? Yeah? Can you hurry up??" 30 seconds later, no one has come out of the bathroom so she starts pounding again "Is somebody in there?"
Eventually she gets into the restroom, thank God, and when she comes back out the card is still on the table next to us. She comes and wordlessly picks up the card, goes to the counter, and picks up the to-go order which was apparently her whole reason for coming in.
I cannot begin to understand or explain this phenomenon that I witnessed.
It was a quiet Tuesday night, a bit rainy, and we were the only customers in the place. We order some lo mein, fried rice, and an egg roll and sit down to wait at a booth in the corner.
A few minutes go by and a woman enters the restaurant. She is flustered and the words she is saying make very little coherent sense but she seems to think that my Caucasian roommate and I, sitting at a table in our street clothes, are employees of the Chinese restaurant. She asks "where's y'all's restroom?" So I point toward the back, and she proceeds to walk to the counter as if she's going to place an order, then walks back over to us asking again where the restroom is, so I point and say aloud that it's in the back.
This woman is so grateful to me for the valuable information that I provided her with that she says she's going to buy me a drink (remember, we are in a Chinese fast food restaurant), proceeds to take her debit card out of her purse and throws it on the empty table beside where my roommate and I are sitting, and then runs off to the bathroom.
My roommate and I look at each other in confusion. We still haven't gotten our food yet because this all happened in the span of about 90 seconds. In the background we can hear this woman pounding on the bathroom door "Is somebody in here? Yeah? Can you hurry up??" 30 seconds later, no one has come out of the bathroom so she starts pounding again "Is somebody in there?"
Eventually she gets into the restroom, thank God, and when she comes back out the card is still on the table next to us. She comes and wordlessly picks up the card, goes to the counter, and picks up the to-go order which was apparently her whole reason for coming in.
I cannot begin to understand or explain this phenomenon that I witnessed.
