Someone let out the stupids

It’s Sunday in Beijing, and for those of you who live here, you know what that means: the stupids are on the loose!

Yes, everywhere you go, you will find hundreds of people doing everything they can to possibly inconvenience and aggravate you.

Today, I had the misfortune of meeting a shop clerk who apparently does not understand English or Chinese.

I was in the CenturyMart near Fulicheng on Sanhuan Lu. When I came up to the counter on the third floor, I saw an ocean of people, because on weekends, that’s what the supermarkets look like.

Every line had at least 30 people, but on the end, there was a line with about 12. I guessed she must work fast, or no one else wanted to take the extra 10 steps to see if that lane, which also extended halfway down the nearest aisle, had any fewer people.

As I neared the front, I would discover that the 18 missing people probably fled in horror. After watching the hapless clerk fumble with the security tag on a blouse for about 10 minutes, I gave her the benefit of the doubt. “Hey, maybe the tag was just stuck really bad,” I thought. Nope. She did the same thing with the next one, and the next one.

Finally, it was my turn.

“Sorry,” she said. Wow, English. For those of you outside China, I’ll advise you now: when someone speaks to you in English, run! Get your shit together. No. Fuck it. Leave it behind and run! They are either trying to rape you for all the money you have, or they are working off a script that is even less sophisticated than the audio track for the Pirates of the Caribbean ride in Disney World.

I told her politely in Chinese, “No problem.” So she said, in Chinese, “Wait a moment.”

Good. Progress. At least she can operate in dialog.

After fumbling to put in a new receipt roll in her counter, she turned around. From here on, I will transcribe all Chinese spoken to English. Lines spoken in English with be marked by (parenthesis).

“(Yes hello thank you, you have huanyingka)”

For your benefit, I will inform you that a huanyingka is a membership card. Yes, they have the stupid discount cards at every store here just like how every store in the US.

“No, sorry, I forgot mine.”

“(Yes hello thank you this way.)”

She was was motioning for me to go to the other side of the security check poles. Why she was speaking to me in such mangled English was beyond me. Perhaps the brain goblins came in the night and stole all the synapses that processed Chinese. No, that can’t be right. How the hell did she get through the rest of her day then?

“(Yes thank you it is helped the bag thank you.)”

She handed me two bags. I guessed she wanted me to put shit in them as she scanned it. Of course, I probably could have deduced this if she said it in fucking Swahili.

And so, she went about scanning everything. Thankfully, I don’t buy clothes. If I did, I would have had to watch her fuck with a security tag for the next hour.

She scanned the first bottle of Pepsi.

“There are six of them,” I said.

She scanned the next bottle.

And the next bottle.

And the next one …

My mind was screaming, “Bitch! Are you retarded? There are 10 more people in line behind me and you are working as slow as fucking possible!” My mouth told my brain, “Shut up, if we say this, we’ll get in trouble.”

And so it continued until she said, “67.10 yuan.” She said this in Chinese, which is funny, because I would have guessed the English Clerk Version 1.0 script they loaded into her brain circuits this morning would have had a line about pointing to the price for the idiot foreigner. I guess not.

I went to the bank earlier, and all I bought was a box of reeds. I had four 100-yuan notes, four tens, two ones and a handful of jiao, which are like dimes.

I handed her 122.1 yuan: a hundred, two tens, two twos and a jiao.

She took it and looked at it.

“(Yes thank you please for I have no change.)”

“Yeah, neither do I. That’s why I gave you a hundred.”

She looked confused for a moment after I said that.

“(Yes thank you please gives me the change for I have no change.)”

“I don’t have any either. I already told you that.”

Now she looked frustrated.

“(Yes thank you please give me the change.)”

I took out all the other non-hundred bills I had and threw them at her.

“(Yes please thank you give me the two tens.)”

“I gave you all the change I have. There’s nothing else.”

“(Yes please thank you give me the two tens.)”

“There aren’t two more tens!”

At this point she grabbed my wallet out of my hands and began looking through it. I was thinking, What the fuck is with this woman?

“(Yes please thank you give me the two tens.)”

“You won’t find them in there.”

“(Yes please thank you give me the US seven dollars.)”

I began to wonder how the hell someone so stupid gets through her day: she can’t understand Chinese.

I looked her over. She didn’t appear retarded.

Her eyes blinked at the same time.

There were no shackles on her feet to prevent her from beating a customer with her cash register in a fit of Downs Syndrome rage.

No, she seemed quite normal, except for her IQ that would make a chimp feel like fucking Einstein.

“Why would I have US seven dollars? I live in China.”

“(Yes please thank you give me the US seven dollars. Yes please thank you give me the US seven dollars.)”

This was the point where I could take no more. I try to be patient with people. Fuck, I even tried to make this woman’s job easier at the start. She just needed to give me a 50-yuan note and a five and I would have been on my way. Unfortunately, her script did not support this.

“You dangerous retard! Stupid woman! Do you understand Chinese!? I don’t have exact change!”

She frowned, then took my money.

As the cash register opened, I saw an ocean of change: notably a pile of fifties and a pile of fives.

So what did she do? That’s right, she took one of my hundreds, gave the rest back to me, and this poor woman who had no change proceeded to count up and hand me three tens, two twos, a five-jiao note and four one-jiao ones.

I just stared at her for a second.

“(Yes thank you it is please does come again thank you please.)”

I shook my head, and left with my chess set, pack of ramen and soda, and walked home praying I never meet her again.

I need to stop going out on Sundays …