Chinese Tax
At the risk of sounding racist…
I work at a Chinese Buffet style restaurant. Been there a long, long time. Almost as long as the place has been in business. I’ve seen everything. It’s not a terrible job. Flexible hours. Good colleagues. I make decent money. It’s close to home. One caveat though; the place is overrun by Chinese people.
By overrun I really mean owned by and operated by. It’s mostly us white folks out front, but it’s a full-on Chinese invasion in the kitchen. Fair enough that they’d know best how to cook their own food – except that half the food they cook isn’t technically Chinese food. And you can forget about trying to communicate with any of them via the eight Chinese words I know or the eight English words they know (none of which seem to overlap); question and answer time involves mostly grunting and pointing. How hard is it to hire someone who speaks English? It’s Canada – it’s full of English-speaking people!
But I digress…
There have been and still are a number of Chinese people working out there with the rest of us common folk. And for the most part they’re decent people. I’d go so far as to say I even like them. A couple of them, anyway. It’s these people who indirectly contribute to this Chinese Tax.
Chinese Tax is not something that affects Chinese people; it affects the non-Chinese people who work with them. English people working within a Chinese-run company are prejudiced against. Well, I guess I can’t speak for all companies, but the one I work for seems to follow this philosophy.
Just a few days prior to this writing, one of my fellow Chineses employees left to go home. The boss came out later, looked at the shift schedule, and calmly asked me what time she left. This could only mean one thing: she didn’t know. From this it can be inferred that she didn’t tell this particular employee what time she could finish her shift (which she always does, being the boss). Now, had one of us white people done this, simply left when we felt like it, we’d have been reprimanded – usually caning, the traditional Chinese punishment. But because she was Chinese, this was fine. Almost as if it were completely natural thing to do. Another thing I question is: why did the employee think it was okay to take off without sighing off her shift or even letting anyone know she was going? Didn’t she fear reprisal? I guess not. She was either stupid, or knew she wouldn’t be punished for it.
In the early days when the business was young, the Chinese employees were given more hours and had to pay less for their meals. Employees get thirty percent off their lunch, whereas the favourites got about double that discount. Oh, and they weren’t supposed to tell. I know this because one of them told me. But since word got out they no longer get this perk.
There are many other examples of this kind of preferential treatment, and us white folks notice. It’s only a matter of time before the revolution comes – and we’re all fired.
The Chris Effect 
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