Then there was the wait staff, which included a myriad of varying ethnicities, including Japanese, Laotian, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Oklahomans, and me–a little bitty, painfully shy girl from Alabama. Some of them spoke English, but many of them did not. The chefs were from Hong Kong primarily the fry cooks, bussers, and dishwashers were mostly Puerto Rican. The Pagoda was a truly American Chinese restaurant, built and owned for years by a Chinese-American family, then, after it was already an established and popular eatery, bought by my friend’s father, a Puerto Rican-American. I worked as a secretary in the German department (I majored in English and German), but I also worked as a hostess and cashier at my friend’s parents’ Chinese restaurant–The Pagoda, where I received an education of a totally different sort, but equally as important, to me anyway. L ike many college students that I teach today, when I was in college, not only was I a full-time student, but I also had two jobs.
