Empire Asian Buffet

Last night, I went to this Asian buffet with some of my high school friends. It was AWESOME. Not because it's such an amazing experience or anything like that, but just because it was great to get together with friends after an entire semester of living at home and not knowing a single person in any one of my classes. Man, the owner/manager was one bored dude. I was the first of our party to arrive, so I sat there in the lobby for a good twenty minutes. In that time, all this guy did was walk from the desk (where he pretended to be checking figures over and over again) to the front door of the restaurant (where he literally stood six inches from the glass and stared off into space like a homesick dog at the pound). Apparently, white people sitting in their lobbies make Chinese restaurantuers very nervous. I can't tell you how many times the owner and the head seating hostess stared at me from across the room. I felt like a half-black, half-Jewish gay social worker at a country club. Since I was so bored, I began looking around.

They had some really funny signs up in that place. One was concerning their "dog restriction," though it seemed more like a procedure than a policy. The first line said, verbatim, "Ask owner of he can tide up 'The Dog' before being seeted." The next one said, "Ask to see training card." I have no earthly clue what that means. The next line said, I'm not making this up, "Ask owner to get some body else to come and watch 'The Dog' away from eating area while is taking food." Now, the thing I'd like to ask them is why are they writing signs in terrible English when they could just write them in perfect Chinese and be done with it? We as customers don't need to know your "dog restriction," so what's the benefit of putting it in English and making yourself look like the undereducated person you really are?

Another one of their funny signs was the sign that displays their hours. Aparently, this place is open from 11-3:30 for lunch, and 4-9 for dinner. So, do they just shut down the whole restaurant for a half hour? If I were to come in at 3:45, what price would I have to pay? Dinner prices haven't started yet, but the lunch schedule is over. Stupid restaurant people. I guess it's a prerequisite for restaurant managers to have poor math skills and/or a complete inability to tell time. Then again, maybe he's just used to digital clocks...