My Parents’ Cat Litter Tray
December 9th 2007 21:07
My parents owned a restaurant but their command of English was, at best, poor. It should have then come to no surprise to me one day when I found out they were using a kitty litter tray to serve drinks to their customers.
They had been using the tray for weeks before anyone said anything. Maybe the customers were too polite to say anything or they figured anyone running a Chinese restaurant probably didn’t speak English that well and took pity on them. It was actually me who drew it to their attention: One evening I was having dinner at the restaurant and I noticed this large tray sitting in front of me with a ‘CAT LITTER TRAY’ sticker prominently stuck on the side. I started giggling. My father asked me what was so funny and I told him to take a look at the tray. As my father read the sticker and I sat there wondering whether he knew enough English to be able to work out what it said, shock slowly registered on his face and he promptly tore it off.
“What’s so funny?” echoed my mother, who was unable to read a word of English.
“It’s a cat litter tray,” my father explained to her. “I’ve removed the sticker as I don’t want our customers to think we serve them drinks out of the same tray a cat poos in.”
After that incident, my father made sure all the trays had no identifying stickers on them.
They had been using the tray for weeks before anyone said anything. Maybe the customers were too polite to say anything or they figured anyone running a Chinese restaurant probably didn’t speak English that well and took pity on them. It was actually me who drew it to their attention: One evening I was having dinner at the restaurant and I noticed this large tray sitting in front of me with a ‘CAT LITTER TRAY’ sticker prominently stuck on the side. I started giggling. My father asked me what was so funny and I told him to take a look at the tray. As my father read the sticker and I sat there wondering whether he knew enough English to be able to work out what it said, shock slowly registered on his face and he promptly tore it off.
“What’s so funny?” echoed my mother, who was unable to read a word of English.
“It’s a cat litter tray,” my father explained to her. “I’ve removed the sticker as I don’t want our customers to think we serve them drinks out of the same tray a cat poos in.”
After that incident, my father made sure all the trays had no identifying stickers on them.
Used in accordance with the terms of Wikimedia Commons’ GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.
| 60 |
| Vote |
subscribe to this blog
