Colorful Characters Part II - Barbara the Lunch Lady

I know I sound like a broken record, and I recognize that I lost all credibility a long time ago, but still, I apologize for the delay.

-Random Cultural Tidbit of the Day-

As a way to make some easy cash while maintaining their image at home, big time celebrities and athletes will shamelessly endorse not-so big time products. Case in point, the other day I was waiting in line at the neighborhood convenience store when I perused the giant display of condoms (*cultural tidbit- Due to the one child policy in China and under availability of medical care for other forms of birth control, condoms are a HUGE industry here) and was shocked to be a greeted by a familiar face; plastered across a Chinese brand of condoms was the sultry pout of Britney Spears. (Really, talk about an Al Pacino-in-the-Godfather-like transformation. Six years ago she was the world’s most famous virgin hosting the Nickelodeon Kid’s Choice Awards, and now she is endorsing China-brand condoms).

On another occasion I was walking down the main street when I noticed another familiar face above a little store. The brand is called “Athletic” and they specialize in basketball apparel. So, who should they pick as the face of modern basketball? How about early 1990’s NBA star Clyde ”the Glyde” Drexler! So, atop every Athletic Store is the blown up image of the 55 year-old Glyde in full uniform, giving his most imposing AARP-game face. And, of course, this is all completely normal to Chinese people.

-Lunch Lady Barbara-

One ‘perk’ of working at Kid Castle is that it provides its employees with dinner on weeknights and lunch on weekends. As was the case with my ill-tempered cleaning lady, once again Kid Castle’s magnanimity towards its employees has had some unforeseen consequences. The next colorful character whom I’d like to introduce to you adds some spice to my life both literally and figuratively. Around the `Castle she’s known as Lunch Lady Barbara.

A stout woman on the wrong end of middle age, Barbara epitomizes the lunch lady stereotype. She is ornery, confrontational, and, naturally, an awful cook. Needless to say, I find her absolutely terrifying. A typical meal of Barbara’s consists of some medley eggs, weird meat, some grassy shoot-stuff, more grassy noodle-shoots, question mark dish vegetable dish, carrots and/or potatoes (both look the same after she is done with them) Chinese meatballs, and rice (even the Chinese people don’t like her food..which is really saying something). If I were a rabbit with a predilection for unidentifiable stringy meat I would be in heaven.

So, given my disinclination towards eating things that ‘look and smell funny,’ and Barbara’s unparalleled ability to prepare foods that ‘look and smell funny,’ it did not take long to establish ourselves as mortal enemies. This wasn’t always the case though. Initially, our relationship had potential to be great. To Barbara, a person’s worth is measured solely by how much they like her cooking, which in turn is a function of how much food one eats. So, given that I am the largest person in the school and thus theoretically able to consume the most food, Barbara had high hopes for me. The first weeks at the school our encounters were borderline pleasant. The typical meal would proceed as follows:

I would hesitantly go to the cafeteria with Matt. During this time, I still felt culturally obligated to eat the food and pretend to like it. So, as soon as Matt informed me that the food was in fact not dog or cat, I would shovel some on my plate and make a go of it. Within ten minutes of ‘eating’ the meal, Barbara would sneak out into the cafeteria and look at everyone’s plate to see how much they had eaten. Since she doles out the portions, she knows precisely the quantity of food that everyone took. So, she can deduce exactly how much everyone has eaten. For the first week or so, I blamed my lack of appetite on my inability to use chopsticks (really. how is someone honestly expected to eat a slab of meat with two sticks?! ) At this point, she was growing suspicious of me, but our relationship was still cordial.

After the chopsticks excuse wore thin, I began trying to pass my uneaten food off on other people’s plates. I would intentionally distract my coworkers and students, then move a slab of meat from my plate onto theirs, then run and turn in my plate and sprint out of the cafeteria. Also weary of Barbara’s wrath, other people did not take kindly to this maneuver of mine, and quickly caught on to this move. Whenever I would pull it, all the students would rat me out to Barbara, which made me look even worse.

Then, something magical happened. I learned how to say “ I don’t want” in Chinese. So, whenever she asked me if I wanted something, I would respond with “bu yao.” Everyone in the cafeteria was greatly amused by this, except for of course, dear old Barbara. From then on, before every meal was over, she would come and mock me and scream at me to leave for not eating her food in her broken Chinese dialect (* every region of China has its own dialects. Unlike dialects in America where you can still understand people from other regions, Chinese dialects are virtually separate languages. It is not uncommon for people of one region to not be able to understand people from another region).

In response to her publicly lambasting me, I just stopped going to the cafeteria. On a few occasions she would come to the office and scream at me to come eat, but I generally refused. I had won the feud. Or so I had thought.

Unbeknownst to me, that sly fox Barbara was hiding one last arrow in her quiver. As it turned out, Barbara was in cahoots with my other great nemesis: the cleaning woman. Together, they began to conspire against me. The cleaning woman would come and report to Barbara every little embarrassing tidbit she could about our apartment and our possessions. In turn, Barbara would so graciously volunteer this information to everyone during meal time. So, for a few weeks, everyone got know exactly how messy my room was, exactly how many pizzas I had ordered, what my laundry smelt like, if I had showered or not, if we had spent the previous night drinking, etc. It was terrible.

To make matters worse, I was being attacked on both sides by my terrible foes. The cleaning woman would partake (I swear) in semi-deliberate acts of sabotage and then report them to Barbara, who would then tell everyone who would listen. One such example was how our socks, continue to this day, to ‘vanish.’ Currently, I have exactly three pairs of socks, all of which I have been forced to buy since I’ve been here. As a result, there have been many days where I had to wear mismatching socks (a black and a white one) because those were the only ones I could find in the entire apartment (since I was wearing long pants I didn’t really think it mattered anyway). Well, the cleaning woman reported my sock-iniquities to Barbara, who, then in front of everyone one day randomly walked up to me and pulled up my jeans to see if I was wearing matching socks. When she discovered to her great disappointment that my socks were indeed matching that day, she explained to everyone how I don’t always wear matching socks. Our feud is beyond ridiculous.

With that last straw, our relationship has morphed into what is characterized by a mutual disliking expressed through passive aggressive comedy (well, actually, she is just aggressive but I can’t understand a word she says). So, as a subtle act of defiance, at every meal now I ask Barbara if she has pizza or not (I ask in Chinese). Then, when she emphatically responds no, I ask her why not, and if she will have pizza the next day. To which, she screams at me in Chinese to get out of the kitchen.

Thanks again for reading. Please feel free to leave comments or questions. Take care.

Colorful Characters Part I- The Cleaning Lady

Colorful Characters Part I

Readers: Since no blog-worthy events have transpired since my previous entry (or at least no blog-propriate blog-worthy events), I’d thought it’d be nice to introduce you to some of the more ‘colorful characters’ that I interact with (albeit usually not voluntarily) on a regular basis.


The Cleaning Lady

As an act of gratitude to our service to the Kid Castle Educational Institute, the owner recently hired a cleaning woman to come to our apartment five times a week. Not only did her duties include cleaning and doing our laundry, but the owner informed us that any errand or task we needed done (i.e. go grocery shopping, cut our toe-nails, braid our hair, be the goalie as we practice taking penalty kicks) she would do for us. If it were circa 1870 in the Deep South she would be called an ‘indentured servant.’ So, given our early twenties-gross-guy slovenliness, we were both quite pleased when we were presented with a real life Chinese lady-slave. Of course, as is the case with most things in life, things haven’t worked out quite like we expected.

Our cleaning woman is a middle-aged, uneducated local with a mannish bowl cut. She mopes around the apartment with her head cocked downwards with a look of numb indifference. She’s the living picture of someone who has lost all hope, and has grudgingly acquiesced to living a life of futile servitude (to be fair, I would be a little irked too if were picking up after a kid half my age, who made 10 times as much money as I did). So, needless to say, her visits are like big bright rays of sunshine in my day.

Unfortunately for all involved parties, her vast eagerness to please is eclipsed only by her inability to do anything right (random tangent- Incompetency coupled with a solid work ethic is the most frustrating combination to deal with in people. Because even though their shoddy work elicits some anger, you can’t get mad at them because they are doing the best they can. Then, as is the case with our cleaning woman, throw in the fact that she costs us nothing and is relatively impoverished means that I have absolutely no right whatsoever to get outwardly mad at her. It’s so maddening. Sometimes, I leave small amounts of money out in hope that she might steal it so I can legitimize my anger, but, of course, just to piss me off she never takes it). Never in my life would I have ever imagined that I would cringe when someone came to my house to clean up my filth (and for those of you who’ve had the ‘pleasure’ of living with me, you know there’s seldom a shortage of it).

My loathing for her was forged from her very first day on the job. After having come and inspected our living quarters to assess its cleanliness, our cleaning woman informed us to put everything on the porch that we didn’t want, and she would throw it out. As was the case, the porch was already littered with junk. There were pizza boxes, empty wrappers, and several trash bags of the cocaine addict’s rain-soaked gross shoes and clothes. Matt and I really didn’t have a lot of trash, so, I don’t think we put any additional stuff out there put anything else out there. That is, of course, for my soccer cleats. Unfortunately, I made the terrible mistake of playing soccer the previous day. And out of common courtesy for Matt, I placed them on the porch to air out (you see where this is going…)

Well, the following day around 12:30 I heard the door creak open. It was her. The previous night we had been out late, and I was feeling absolutely exhausted. I distinctly remember having this internal debate as I lay in bed:

“I left my soccer cleats on the porch I should really get up and tell her to not throw them out. No, it will be okay. No way is she that dumb that she would throw out a nice pair of cleats. They clearly aren’t with everything else, and are not trash.”

So, naturally, an hour and a half later I got out of bed and lo and behold, none of the trash on the porch is gone- except for my cleats. There were still the gross bags of clothing, pizza boxes, used toilet paper (well, no, but you get the point)everything… except for my cleats. I furiously ran down to the garbage can outside of our building, but it had already been picked up. Once at work, I had my boss call her and ask what happened to the cleats, and she said she had put them in the trash. They were gone. On her first day at work, she managed to throw out a pair of cleats that were equal in value to almost two months of her salary. And to make matters worse, I have absolutely no right to get angry at her. She did exactly what she said she was going to do. Nothing makes me madder than not being able to get mad.

Since, things have only gotten more frustrating. Since she comes so frequently, there is seldom a lot of work for her to do. There are never more than two dishes to clean and two pairs of clothes to wash. But, of course, she stays for at least an hour every day. In an effort to stay busy, Matt and I have discovered that there is absolutely nothing this woman will not wash once. If any piece of laundry is left in plain view she will wash it despite how clean it may be. There have been several instances when she has come into my room and motioned if I wanted anything washed. I usually tell her no, it’s ok. Five minutes later she reappears in my room and savagely starts grabbing clothes off my floor to go wash. I’ve literally had to chase her down and rip the clothes out of her hands to stop her. Normally, I wouldn’t mind my clothes being washed so much, except that here in China no one has dryers in their homes. Instead, everyone hangs up their clothes outside. While practical in warm summer months, air-drying in near freezing temperatures isn't very effective. There have been times when I haven't had anything to wear because she has washed it all and it is flapping against the chilly wind outside (stuff can take a few weeks to dry).

Moreover, as a further testament to her insanity, when she washes our clothes she refuses to use our brand new washing machine. Rather, she hand washes everything. When she is here I can hear here scrubbing violently on the floor in the next room on my already clean shirt. If my clothes could talk they would be screaming for their lives.

Another favorite game of hers is to play her version of capture the flag called 'clean Peter's room.' When she first started coming and I was home, I would motioned to her to not clean my room. In spite of my objections, she persisted and I generally acquiesced. I recall one time I was pretty adamant about her not cleaning my room, and like an OCD person on crack, she began furiously picking up little pieces of garbage off my floor. It was as if she derived some sort of sick satisfaction from picking up candy wrappers and q-tips. So, now, when I tell her not to clean my room or make my bed (yes, she has tried multiple times to make my bed when I am in it…don’t ask) she hides and waits for me to leave - even if just for a moment. As soon as I let my guard down and get something from the kitchen or go to the bathroom, like a predator stalking its prey she pounces. And before I even realize what's taking place, everything is already misplaced and rearranged in the least sensible places in my room. The battle is lost.

But, of course, she is just doing her job, so I have no right whatsoever to get angry- which is so infuriating.


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Next week I will give a profile of the Barbara the lunch lady. As always, thanks for reading.