Lesson 21
Why Are They So Unlucky?
Text A
I wonder why so many shop-assistants are so foultempered? Inspite of so many "campaigns" to improve the services in the past years, we see no appreciable change so far. If Dad and Mum are to be believed, the services used to be quite good in the fifties. But then, they always say everything used to be good in the fifties. I find the older people grow, the more nostalgic they become.
Now Granny never lets a day go by without remi-niscing on the good old things in the good old days . Once when she saw Xiao Hong and me eating some mooncakes with relish, she said pityingly, "You poor children, you don't know what real mooncakes taste like. The worst in the old tasted much better than the best that rnoney can buy nowadays!" We burst out laughing, not taking her words seriously.
Now to come back to the bad service in shops and department stores. People often say that when you buy something, you are spending money to buy rudeness and anger. Today I saw a loing exactly that. I was at a department store and I happened to witness a typical quarrel. I was next to a counter selling tea and I saw an elderly man come up and ask a young woman was busy weighing and wrapping tea into standard-sized "packs "Do you have very good green tea?"
The woman glanced up to size him up. He was ordinarily dressed and spoke with a provincial accent. obviously a man of no consequence. She went on with her work and the man had to repeat his question. After another pause the woman snorted out: "Yes: Twenty-six yuan a liang. " Not believing his ears, the man tried to correct her. "You mean twenty-six yuaw a jin?" Upon this the woman flared up and shouted: "I said twenty-six yuan a LIANG ! Can't you hear straight? If you want a jin, then it's two hundred and sixty yuan. Is that CLEAR?"
The man seemed to be stunried by her sudden