Only in Taiwan – Episode 3: Special Lazy Bastard Edition

My empathy is reserved for people who deserve it, like the group of bewildered European tourists who approached me at the corner of Xinyi and Anhe Road, asking if I knew where Taipei 101 could be found. Yeah, you see, walk toward that really tall fucking building that’s so close it would crush us if it fell over in our direction. I could have also told them to get on any bus headed toward that monstrosity blocking out a third of the sky, but that might have caused their heads to implode. You’re welcome or however you say that in European.

Apparently, the left side register had just run out of receipt paper, so the cashier said to me in Chinese, “Wait a moment, I’ve got to change the paper, sorry,” and I replied, “No problem, I’m not in a hurry.” Otherwise, I would have been in and out of there in under a minute, and wouldn’t have been around to witness the incident that went down at the right side register. This is standard Lazy Bastard behavior. Having at least an above-average sense of self-awareness, I don’t need to understand Chinese to know what’s going on. Clearly, the printer is out of paper and my friend here needs to change it. Plus, I’m not in a hurry. I never am.

Being in a hurry results in a condition called Hurry Up and Wait, and I hate HUAW more than I hate when people drive their scooters on the sidewalk, not to mention when foreigners do it because “that’s how it’s done here.” Fuck you. All of you nitwit apologists for inconsiderate, uncivilized and dangerous behavior that puts innocent people at risk for the sake of your convenience. You know what else they “do” here? They live at home until they’re forty fucking years old and throw their shitty used toilet paper in a bin beside the squatter, which stays there until the indentured Malaysian housemaid gets around to taking the stinking blue plastic bag down to the garbage trucks. You don’t want to start a discussion with me about how things are done around here; I guarantee your feelings will be irreparably hurt.

Not being terribly interested in watching and making Ms. Pan uncomfortable as she changed the receipt paper, I wheeled around to see what was happening with my buddy at the right side register. One of the items on the counter was a small, clear plastic hexa-box containing chocolates. He picked it up and said, “Do you have more of these? How many? I want more of these.” The cashier responded in a barely intelligible garble of English that they did not in fact have more of those.

“Are you sure?” he said, “because I was in here last week and that, that, that manager guy said you had boxes of them in back.”

The cashier’s eyes bulged for a moment and nervously repeated what she said before, “We no hab.”

“How much are these?” the guy snapped, his prickishness coming to the surface. “How much?”