Beijing Boyce

Essential equipment for some Beijing service staff.

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Update: Part 2 of the list is here.

A few days ago, The Village Grouch forwarded me a New York Times article titled, “100 Things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do“. (It lists the first 50 items, with the second 50 to come next week). Since that time, TVG has been messaging me about which of these things are being done at various local eateries, and two top the list:

• 35. Do not eat or drink in plain view of guests.
• 47. Do not gossip about co-workers or guests within earshot of guests.

Sounds about right. And in the spirit of the list, here are a few things off the top of my head I would add based on my Beijing experience (feel free to add your own):

- Do not clip fingernails within sight of patrons

- Do not hawk up loogies within earshot of patrons

- Bring utensils (applies only to Union Bar & Grille)

- Do not use your hands to put ice into glasses

- Do not pass full glasses of liquid over open laptops

- Don’t yell across the room at other staff members

- If a song is stuck on replay, i.e. it has played nine times straight, change it.

The best thing about the bar at the Capital Club: The spectacular view of Beijing from the fiftieth floor. The worst thing:  The distance to ground level should a medical emergency arise in which a patron needs to be rushed to a waiting ambulance, say, if he or she were sitting in the bar innocently minding his or her own business and ended up cajoled into trying some of this…

I dipped the end of a toothpick in the jar on the left, licked the sauce off the last three millimeters of it – taking in a fraction of a raindrop’s worth – and felt, as advertised on the bottle, pain! I rank it somewhere between the half-dozen times I experienced tear gas in Seoul and sticking a lit cigarette on my tongue for three seconds. I struggled against an instant case of the hiccups, felt a trickle of sweat zigzag down my back, and, when an acquaintance said “wipe under your eyes,” found the area damp with perspiration.

Trier beware, one might say, but what confounds me are these words on the label: “one drop is enough”. Enough for what? To turn Houhai into a spicy hotpot? To, in mist form, dispel an angry mob of Beijing Guo’an supporters? To fry into a smoking heap of ashes the next lady bar tout or drug dealer who approaches me in Sanlitun?

In any case, here are some additional slogans that should be included on this particular bottle: “Not for internal use“, “Atomic hot pepper death sauce”, and, “Made from chili peppers crown deep in the jungle primeval by the inmates of a Guatemalan insane asylum.”