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muckefuckI keep swearing off the Korean place on Clark and my deep-seated love of 돼지불고기 keeps dragging me back. There's not a thing wrong with the food. It's a bit pricier than other options and not the healthiest, but surely better than what I would eat if I went to any cafeteria on campus. No, the problem is the family that runs it.
I remember trying recently to explain the odd treatment I once received at the hands of the twentysomething daughter. It merged belligerence and almost obsequious civility in a manner that soured me on the place for months. I crept back in the evening a couple weeks ago and ordered from the aged father, who can be a little cranky but falls well short of such unsettling passive-aggressiveness. It did occur to me that I probably wouldn't be so lucky at lunchtime and when, it fact, it was the young woman who came to the register, I silently muttered the supplication Please don't be weird.
It worked, after a fashion: She went well beyond "weird" to outright batshit.
First, I got the same manic working-over as before: "Spicy pork? Is just that what you came her for? Let me make sure we have it, since you came her just for that. We had some earlier, but we may not have any more. DO WE HAVE SPICY PORK? You had a good reason to come here, since we do have it. Brown rice? Let me check if we have that, too." And so on, for at least a solid minute until she'd finished counting out the last of the "dirty money" to give me. When she turned away, I glanced at a woman waiting within earshot for her takeout and her expression eloquently informed that I was only the latest victim.
But the real fun only started after I was seated. The kindly old mother, whose worst sin is a touch of dottiness, came out to confirm my order. The daughter interrogated her and she confessed that she'd forgotten it. "HOW COULD YOU FORGET IT?" and on and on, to the point where I was ready to cancel it, except guess who would be responsible for refunding my money? So I just stared out the window at the swirling snow and reflected on the fact that whatever modern composition full of honks and squeaks that was playing on FMT was such appropriate accompaniment that I could almost hear the Gods sniggering.
The patter didn't stop, but at least it no longer involved me. She was ranting about getting paid, about her work. Then it happened: Somehow, she caught the notion that her parents had ignored lock and alarm and broken into her bedroom. Now her running debate with no one gained a target. For the rest of my meal, she was stomping about, haranguing her parents, and becoming every more agitated and paranoid.
Their attempts to shush her only set her off. At one point, her father came to apologise to the few doughty customers remaining, explaining "She won't take her medicine." But well before that I'd grokked that we were dealing with an unmedicated mentally ill person. Paranoid schizophrenic at a guess, but that's just the disease whose symptoms I know best. In retrospect, the "noisy environment" she complained about while distractedly trying to count my change must have been entirely between her ears.
Up until that penny dropped, though, I was tempted to say something, thinking she might respond better to a request from a stranger than from her own parents. But this would do nothing but enrage someone off their anti-psychotic. I did my best to background it all by trying to reconceptualise it as an avant-garde piece of midday dinner theatre, but that only got me so far. The youngsters at the next table were doing an admirable job of feigning nonchalance, but I saw through it when I got up to refill my water cup while father and daughter were arguing out in the snow.
So, mystery solved. My heart goes out to parents; running a restaurant and caring for a psychotic child are each challenge enough, and I can't conceive of trying to manage both at once. But no amount of sympathy will get me in there for lunch again. From now on, if I want Korean, I'm waiting for the weekend.
I remember trying recently to explain the odd treatment I once received at the hands of the twentysomething daughter. It merged belligerence and almost obsequious civility in a manner that soured me on the place for months. I crept back in the evening a couple weeks ago and ordered from the aged father, who can be a little cranky but falls well short of such unsettling passive-aggressiveness. It did occur to me that I probably wouldn't be so lucky at lunchtime and when, it fact, it was the young woman who came to the register, I silently muttered the supplication Please don't be weird.
It worked, after a fashion: She went well beyond "weird" to outright batshit.
First, I got the same manic working-over as before: "Spicy pork? Is just that what you came her for? Let me make sure we have it, since you came her just for that. We had some earlier, but we may not have any more. DO WE HAVE SPICY PORK? You had a good reason to come here, since we do have it. Brown rice? Let me check if we have that, too." And so on, for at least a solid minute until she'd finished counting out the last of the "dirty money" to give me. When she turned away, I glanced at a woman waiting within earshot for her takeout and her expression eloquently informed that I was only the latest victim.
But the real fun only started after I was seated. The kindly old mother, whose worst sin is a touch of dottiness, came out to confirm my order. The daughter interrogated her and she confessed that she'd forgotten it. "HOW COULD YOU FORGET IT?" and on and on, to the point where I was ready to cancel it, except guess who would be responsible for refunding my money? So I just stared out the window at the swirling snow and reflected on the fact that whatever modern composition full of honks and squeaks that was playing on FMT was such appropriate accompaniment that I could almost hear the Gods sniggering.
The patter didn't stop, but at least it no longer involved me. She was ranting about getting paid, about her work. Then it happened: Somehow, she caught the notion that her parents had ignored lock and alarm and broken into her bedroom. Now her running debate with no one gained a target. For the rest of my meal, she was stomping about, haranguing her parents, and becoming every more agitated and paranoid.
Their attempts to shush her only set her off. At one point, her father came to apologise to the few doughty customers remaining, explaining "She won't take her medicine." But well before that I'd grokked that we were dealing with an unmedicated mentally ill person. Paranoid schizophrenic at a guess, but that's just the disease whose symptoms I know best. In retrospect, the "noisy environment" she complained about while distractedly trying to count my change must have been entirely between her ears.
Up until that penny dropped, though, I was tempted to say something, thinking she might respond better to a request from a stranger than from her own parents. But this would do nothing but enrage someone off their anti-psychotic. I did my best to background it all by trying to reconceptualise it as an avant-garde piece of midday dinner theatre, but that only got me so far. The youngsters at the next table were doing an admirable job of feigning nonchalance, but I saw through it when I got up to refill my water cup while father and daughter were arguing out in the snow.
So, mystery solved. My heart goes out to parents; running a restaurant and caring for a psychotic child are each challenge enough, and I can't conceive of trying to manage both at once. But no amount of sympathy will get me in there for lunch again. From now on, if I want Korean, I'm waiting for the weekend.
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I think that, perhaps, my favorite moment of dealing with the mentally-ill (or perhaps simply foreign) foreigners was when
Cabbies and waiters are miles different, obviously. It's part of why I ordered from Siam Cafe for as long as I did: regional, local neighborhoodism at work.
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