hell hath no fury like a chinese woman after free stuff

So, Saturday morning I was doing my second event with Asian American for Community Outreach. This time it was at Bethal Grace Lutheran Church near San Bruno Ave. The church distributes groceries from the Food Bank every Saturday morning, mostly to low-income Chinese people in the neighborhood. When we got there, the Reverend asked whether any of us wanted to help sign people up for a special food distribution coming up in October, sponsored by the Chinese Newcomers Center in Chinatown. I thought, why not? I can speak enough Chinese to do the job. All it required was for me to put down any interested person's name, ID and zip code. Easy enough. The Reverend suggested that we start out front, where the people were in line waiting for the day's distribution. So the three of us who volunteered for this task went outside. I innocently went up to a few old Chinese ladies who were sitting on the steps and sat down next to them. I asked whether any of them were interested in signing up for free groceries for next month. As I began writing down the first few people's info, the line sort of collapsed, and more and more people gathered around me and began shoving their IDs at me. There was no order whatsoever. I tried to get the info down as quickly as I could and move on to the next person. But it was a lost cause; I just wasn't fast enough, and the crowd just grew bigger and more impatient. Then a couple of ladies began grabbing my paper and pen and insisted on writing their own names down. And to make matters worse, the girls who were working for the church began yelling at me to stop whatever I was doing and for people to reform the line. At this point, I had no idea where the two other volunteers who were doing the same thing as I were. Finally, I just told the crowd that I can only do three more and I had to stop. I mentioned that I would be signing them up later inside the church. But the old ladies wouldn't have it and kept pleading me to do just one more. I had to be ruthless and turned them down. As I walked away, I heard a couple of them cuss at me. I was like, WTF, I am just volunteering here; I don't freaking get paid to put up with this crap. I mean, really???

Anyways, the story ends okay. We went upstairs, arranged some tables, and the old ladies came up after they got their food for the day and continued to sign up. We ended up signing up 299 people.

I tell you though, compare to the homeless, alcoholics, and drug addicts, old Chinese ladies are rude and mean and ungrateful. Don't mess with them. For reals.