Never send a white girl to do a Chinese girl’s job.
This girl at work decided on Thursday since we were going to have a week off (not our choice, and also with very little warning so it wasn’t like we could plan anything last minute, freaking jerks.) we should order in lunch on Friday for a bunch of us and saw what each person wanted. The options were pizza, chinese food and swiss chalet.
Seeing as how on Wednesday we all had large servings of Pizza during the second potluck of the month, I opted for Swiss Chalet since I didn’t really have any interest in chinese food. Of course it seems the majoriy of the people picked chinese as their first option. I went with it since why the hell not… it’s a company “girl bonding” thing.
So we were all picking dishes we wanted to get to share and the girl ordered from some place. The food shows up and as I’m walking into the lunch room I hear her going on the phone to the company saying how the portions are way too small and how it was too expensive and she’s never going to order from there again. I don’t know about you, but when I worked retail, complaints like that meant nothing. The woman even said “This was your first time ordering with us” as a retort to the “I’m never ordering from you again” and while the food was very obviously overpriced, I don’t know, I didn’t see it as being that bad.
I also found out that not everyone in the office was invited to partake in this lunch which I thought was rude since well… there’s other people that are in the lunch room as well and suddenly they’re eating their brought-from-home food while we’re all pigging out on this nonexistant chinese food.
Side story:
One of the chinese girls came into the room when a large number of us were in there, and said in Cantonese to the other chinese girls in the office (but not me) “Oh… there’s no room for me to sit down” and just out of habit in that I understood every word she said, I immediately replied (in English) with “Hey, there’s a chair under this bag.” And had EVERYONE in the office stare at me. One other girl said “So… she understands Cantonese?” And the first girl who talked was like “If she replied to me… I’m going to say yes.” It was funny. So they start talking to me in Cantonese asking me how all this chinese food came about and what we paid for it and all that jazz, I’m guessing so the non-chinese people who took part wouldn’t know what if anything we were talking about, although I replied in English anyways so I’m sure you could figure it out.
She said the same thing in Chinese to the other Chinese girls as I said to the non-chinese people. “Leave it to a white girl to order chinese food and this is what happens.” is what I said. The chinese girl said “See the white people went and ordered Chinese food without asking us Chinese people where would be good to order from!”
I think the whole thing was silly. I was full and had about a plate and a half full, there was lots of food for the people who ordered. It wasn’t a stuff-yourself-silly type of lunch and it was expensive for what it was… but really.
I think the most amusing was the girl who did the ordering, I mentioned “Wow, so I’ve finally eaten chicken balls” and she’s like “You’re Chinese and you’ve never ha d chicken balls??” To me and everyone else’s reply of being “BECAUSE I’m Chinese is why I’ve never had chicken balls! That’s a dish invented by Americans and somehow given a Chinese name.” It was HILARIOUS.
Ignorance is bliss I suppose.
