I’m really aggravated. I ordered Chinese takeout for dinner, okay? I called the place and asked for a large order of Roast Pork LoMein, a large order of General Tso’s Chicken, and a large order of the Chef’s Special: Crispy Beef. I ordered the beef because it was the Chef’s Special, so:
a. it had to be good, right? and
b. the menu said it had carrots in it and that could count as my vegetable
Phone order-taker man said it would be 20 minutes. To be fair, since it was approaching dinner time, I gave them an extra five minutes beyond the time they quoted me to get my food together before I went to pick it up.
But when I got there, it wasn’t ready. I was directed to grab a chair for a while. I sat and waited while they seemingly caught the chicken, cut its head off, plucked the feathers out of it, cut it up, and deep fried it and poured General Tso’s secret sauce all over it.
FINALLY they brought out my order.
As the order delivery lady handed it over to me she said something in Chinese that I didn’t quite catch. I was going to say “What?” but then didn’t because I remembered that except for take out menu, I don’t speak Chinese anyway, so it wouldn’t have mattered.
When I got home and unpacked the sack of food, I got a surprise: two egg rolls that I hadn’t asked for. I deduced then (because I’m smart that way) that the order delivery lady had probably said to me, “Thank you for your patience. You waited longer than it took us to build the Great Wall and so I hope you’ll accept my offering of two free egg rolls.” I mean, I’m not exactly sure that’s what she had said, but I wasn’t about to drive back over there and return the egg rolls, so we ate them.
The egg rolls were good, but the Chef’s Special was not special at all. Not even close. In fact, I suggest you skip it.
The sack of food also contained 6 bags of Chinese noodles. The fried kind they’d put in a bowl on your table if you were sitting at a restaurant. The equivalent, I think, of a basket of corn chips on your table when you go to Don Pablos. Then there were about 12 fortune cookies in the bag.
I wondered what they were thinking. I mean, people! Come on! I only ordered three entrees. Why do I need 6 bags of noodles and 12 fortune cookies? Then I started to think that maybe they were trying to tell me something. Perhaps three large orders of food are supposed to feed more than 3 people? Well, no matter, we could each have four fortune cookies for dessert.
But here’s the part that pisses me off the most. They gave me the WRONG fortune cookies. They gave me someone else’s fortune cookies! No wonder there were so damn many of them.
How do I know they weren’t MY fortune cookies? I opened them all. I read the fortunes. Check these out:
The only rose without a thorn is friendship. What is THAT supposed to mean? Whose stupid fortune is that? Not mine.
Keep your feet on the ground even though friends flatter you. What friends are flattering me? Where are they doing this? Behind my back?
You love sports, horses and gambling but not to excess. Okay. Wrong, wrong, and wrong again. I don’t love sports unless roller skating counts. Does roller skating count? Not the roller blade kind. The old fashioned kind where you have 4 wheels underfoot and are much more stable and the disco lights are going and you skate round and around to the beat of the music until they call “couples only.” Plus, I hate horses. I’m sorry, but it’s true. I was never fond of horses as a child, even though all girls are supposed to be in love with them. Sorry Black Beauty. Plus, once when I was in high school I had this boyfriend who took me horse back riding and the horse slipped on a patch of ice on a hill and we were thrown to the ground and the horse fell and my stupid boyfriend worried more about the horse’s leg and if it was hurt than he did about me, and it wasn’t even his horse! And finally, gambling? Come on! Okay, I do sometimes buy a lottery ticket, but only when the jackpot is REALLY, REALLY big so millions of others are buying tickets too and they ruin my chances of winning. Like I said, this one, definitely NOT mine.
But wait. It gets better. Immediately after I opened the one about horses and gambling I opened:
What’s vice today may be virtue tomorrow. Seriously. Look, I have it right here.
I couldn’t stop there though. There were two more cookies left and I had to see if one of them was actually meant for me.
You have an important new business development shaping up. Well, that’s totally news to me. So I think it’s not mine.
And after that:
You will have good luck and overcome many hardships. Does that mean hardships in the new business? And if so, what is it? So again, not my fortune!
I went through all twelve cookies and am feeling terribly full now only to be disappointed.
I decided I wasn’t going to stand for this so I drove over to the take out place again and told them my problem. There was a lot of fist pumping and pointing and raised voices as they argued with me. They said I couldn’t prove I got those fortunes from their cookies. They said maybe I got them from Wong’s down the road. I got mad and stormed out and all the workers yelled after me in Chinese as I headed out the door. I don’t know what they said. It was probably an apology but I’m going to have to learn to speak Chinese beyond the menu dialect if I’m going to be able to figure it out.
Running With Books 