How Do They Stay in Business??????

Last night, for an early Valentine’s celebration, Papa and I went out for dinner. Feeling adventurous, we chose a Chinese restaurant that we’ve never been to before. It turned out to be your typical Americanized strip-mall version of Oriental décor and cuisine. Nothing that unusual - except that the place was virtually empty.

There was one other couple in the whole restaurant and they left shortly after the arrival of our entrée. An older Chinese lady waited on us attentively (What else did she have to do?) while an older gentleman and woman (of moderate, indeterminate age) puttered around the outskirts of the room and wandered in and out of the front and kitchen doors. The whole thing had a rather surreal, “Outer Limits-ish” feeling about it.

And we couldn’t help pondering, “How do they stay in business?”. We certainly didn’t pay enough for our meal to cover the food, lights, equipment and hired help. Perhaps they have some illegal and highly lucrative business going on behind the scenes. After all, we never actually saw into “the kitchen”.

There’s another business at our favorite local mall that we’ve been wondering the same thing about. I’m not sure what the store is really called. We’ve always referred to it as “Gaudy Oriental Things “R” Us”. It’s located several miles down the freeway from it’s sister store, “Tacky Lawn Ornaments Galore”.

In the 4 years that we’ve been frequenting this mall we’ve only seen a customer (yes, a single customer) inside on 2 occasions – no sales people either (although one did appear from somewhere mysterious on the 2 occasions when an actual vertical, breathing human set foot on the premises). Now this is a very large corner shop in a prime retail establishment. The rent has to be exorbitant. If they are not selling ANY of the jade dragons, painted fans, geisha dolls, paper lanterns or kimonos; how are they satisfying the landlord? I suspect there’s an illicit drug operation working out of the back room.

My spider sense is tingling folks. I just know something untoward is going on. Have you any theories? Perhaps together we can blow the lid off this mystery.