The Chinese Connection

So I merged from Pretzels to Chinese food this week. I posted myself in the food court and prepared to take my notes. As usual, it was lunch rush. Since its my first day observing the place, I can't really say if there are certain people that eat there more than others yet. I did, however, manage to establish one thing for sure.
The people that work at that place are champions.
Okay, so hear me out here for a second. I was watching this place that for the sake of this paper we'll call, "Chai-nee". Now, the man that was working serving food didn't speak very good english, and what english he DID manage to speak was pretty blurry with a heavy Asian accent. This didn't bother him though, because that sly little asian man used it to his advantage.
I'm not kidding.
Here in good old City of the Crosses, we aren't very used to having foreign people unless they're from good ol' Mexico. I don't mean that to be derogatory, but it's very true. We aren't a very large city, and we aren't exactly one of the hot spots in the united states. That is how it is.
The reason I bring this up is because I noticed that a great amount of of people that went to order food were VERY uncomfortable trying to communicate with this worker that had such a heavy accent, and he knew it too. He handed out free samples like a mad man and was INCREDIBLY persistent. He almost didn't even stop to listen to what the people were trying to order. He simply eagerly pointed to food and ladled it into the styrofoam food trays by the mound. What should have been a simple rice bowl amounted to massive piles of food.
People simply nodded in confused and awkward agreement as this man loaded them with piles of food that they didn't want in the first place, bringing a 5 dollar meal up to a 20 dollar one.
And so it was that this tiny Asian old man took many people for a ride.
I watched him do this time after time after time, customer  after costumer.
To my surprise, very few customers were actually confident or brazen enough to state that the mountains of chinese food were in fact, not what they wanted. Most people simply nodded with large awkward smiles slapped across their face as they watched this man ask a question. They would simply nod with the large smiles on their faces and watch as another scoop of bourbon chicken was added to the mound. I saw people who went in for what looked like lunch come out with two heavy grocery bags worth of chinese food.
I couldn't help but wonder, was this man more fluent in english than he was letting on? Perhaps this was simply a ploy? He was fast and steady, and he seemed to be cunning.
It was a funny event to behold, and it lasted the entire hour that I sat and watched. So many disgruntled customers left holding weighted bags of food. They couldn't really be mad though, because there was such a "barrier" of language between the man and themselves. It was funny to watch them look at the bags that held enough chinese food to last the week. You could almost read their minds. They all seemed to look like they were thinking "What the hell am I going to do will all of this food?". The words were crystal clear on their faces.