On Chinese

The interesting thing about working in a Chinese restaurant is the utter ambivalence of the clientele. Fine dining is about the pageantry, and people bring expectations of the dining experience. People go to nice restaurants to feel catered to, to experience culinary pampering, to show off their sophistication or wealth or whatever other form of clout they want to have.
I've been in fine dining for long enough that I carry the pageantry of dining wherever I go. If I'm paying someone to prepare food for me, I better get some sort of show--or at least be made to feel significant--in the process.
And then there's the Chinese place. It's a destination for office lunches, inter-class yens, high school escapism. For the price of a McMeal, people get wonton dippers and tea, a cup of soup (from scratch), and a big-ol pile of from-scratch entree with a ladleful of steamed or fried rice. They generally don't give a damn about the pageantry. If anything, they tend to resent the waiting; when people do take time to savor, they end up having half an appetizer when the soup shows up, and half the soup when the entrees start arriving. Usually, though, the cups of soup disappear in two glugs. And even though it takes about 90 seconds to cook up and plate most of the entrees, sometimes nearly three minutes for a complicated order, people end up sitting and staring at empty cups, glaring at me for keeping them waiting.
Fine dining is the pageantry. Chinese is the food. Get the hell out of my face because I want to stuff it with General Tso ('General Tuh-so' in local vernacular) Chicken, okay?
Unfortunately, because the experience is not part of eating Chinese, the tips tank, too. People think nothing of leaving no tip on takeout--I've always at least rounded up to the next dollar, if not tipped outright. And people feel generous about leaving $6 on a tab of $5.20. Many people leave nothing. Truly bizarre.