In the United States, there is a familiar sight in small Chinese restaurants: somewhere off to the side, usually at a corner table, a child is staring at a screen.
One place I went to had taken that a step further. Instead of just parking the kid there, they had the child working the register. I have not looked into the labor laws in this state, so let’s assume for the moment that this was legal. In a way, it is not the worst idea. At least the kid gets to practice arithmetic and learn not to freeze up when dealing with adults.
And the child really was quick. A few taps on the screen, and dine-in versus takeout was marked correctly every time. Taking cash, making change, running cards, handling signatures—everything was done with the ease of someone who had already done it many times. The parents clearly trusted the kid quite a bit too. Most of the time they stayed busy in the kitchen and rarely came out to check.
The problem was not competence. The problem was that the child had no basic sense of courtesy in a business setting.
Not rudeness in the aggressive sense—nothing openly hostile, no bad attitude, no snapping at customers. Just complete silence. No greeting, no acknowledgment, not even a proper look at the person standing there. The whole thing had the air of an old state-run shop clerk from the ration-ticket era.
Of course, people let it slide. Partly because it is a child, and adults are reluctant to make an issue of that. Partly because the food there is genuinely good. For a lot of Chinese people in a culinary wasteland like Chicago, delicious food covers a multitude of sins. If the food is good enough, people will tolerate almost anything.
Courtesy, though, is almost entirely learned. Parents have to teach it. If they do not, then a sharper kid may eventually pick it up alone as an adult. A less perceptive one may end up entering society with that deficit completely intact.
And once that happens, nobody is likely to sit them down and explain it directly. The feedback comes in other forms: strained relationships, awkward interactions, being passed over for raises or promotions, a hundred small but costly frictions that accumulate over time. In the worst cases, that kind of blind spot can even get passed down to the next generation.
Compared with that, the value of “practicing math” seems almost laughably small.
Still, however bad this is, it is not as bleak as the other version you see so often: Chinese restaurant kids with nothing to do all day except stare at a tablet for six or seven hours. Every time I see that, it makes me feel a sharp kind of sadness.