Eggplant in face for shopworker

Press, 1 November 1984, Page 30

Eggplant in face for shopworker

NZAP-AP Peking The Chinese have long complained about rude shop assistants, but customers can be nasty too, wrote a vegetable-store employee who was smacked in the teeth with an eggplant hurled by a man who claimed he was cheated. ’>

“What am I supposed to do?” asked the employee, Wu Lin, of Hebei Province, in a letter published in the

“Workers Daily” newspaper (“Gongren Ribao”). Wu wrote that the angry customer demanded the store exchange an eggplant he bought that had rotten spots. Wu gladly complied, he wrote, but the customer said the replacement was too small..

“He threw the eggplant in my face and gave me bloody teeth,” wrote Wu. “I was so angry I took my hat off and raised my fists, but remembered our policy of ‘politeness to. the customers,’ and did not fight.” What made Wu more angry was that some customers accused him of “backing off so that he might seam a bonus from the store manager for politeness,” he wrote. The Government has conducted several campaigns aimed at improving the attitude of shop assistants, often accused of being rude, lazji and sloppy.