Wednesday 10 December 2008

Crackers

Ah, Costco, cheap as chips but nowhere near as big as a French hypermarket. I broke some kind of unwritten law there today. All around the place are people giving you small tasters of some new line in food items.
And it came to pass that I came upon an abandoned food-tasting station, but still with tasty snacks crying out,
'Eat me!'
So verily, I took a little cheese cracker and lifted the knife from the plate of cream cheese and was about to spread said cracker with said cheese when from nowhere (seemingly) popped up a small Chinese woman screaming, 'excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, excuse me.'
She took the knife from my hand and like a ninja wielding some kind of special ninja weapon, she cleaned the blade in one swift movement of paper towel, whilst simultaneously ripping the minute cracker from my other hand and tossing it contemptuously into a nearby bin. From some nook or cranny appeared an enormous bottle of disinfectant which she used to render the knife beyond hygiene and into the realms of godliness and somehow it seemed to me that she spun the knife in the air as she stripped off her latex gloves and donned a new pair, although I may have imagined this manoeuvre.
By now, an amused gaggle of onlookers were making comments about how dare a mere mortal touch the food samples and chuckling.

Finally, the Chinese ninja took a new tiny cracker, spread it with cheese from the exact plate that had been sitting there exposed the whole time, and handed it to me, her face contorting into a Jack-o-Lantern smile and saying something along the lines of,
'Thank-you for trying our new cream cheese spread,' I think she may have bowed to me as well.
I raised my left eyebrow at her, hoping she'd understand the full meaning of it.

In most countries, you could say, 'Well, who do you get demonstrating food samples in Costco? Probably not brain surgeons,' but here, well, you could easily be receiving your tasty bite from a rocket scientist or a neurosurgeon, seriously, it keeps you humble.

3 comments:

Sleepy said...

Hahaha!
I would have spat her sample out on the floor and announced to all and sundry, "Filth!".

Schneewittchen said...

I know, but I was feeling the the warmth of all the camaraderie :)

Kateryna said...

lol