I also thought this thread was going to be about the nouveau riche, and I had a story I wanted to share. So I'm going to hijack this thread and share my story anyways.
Last week, my dad had a female friend visiting from China. This lady is pretty wealthy and spent the entire week shopping. She bought so much stuff and would spend a few thousand dollars at each store.
At the end of the week, she decided that she wanted to buy an iPad. This was about an hour before my dad had to take her to the airport to catch her flight back to China. So my aunt went with her to the Apple store. The lady doesn't speak any English, so my aunt had to translate back and forth between the lady and the salesman.
The lady asked for the new iPad, and the saleman explained the new iPad isn't out yet. She got a little bit huffy and said she wanted the most expensive iPad available then. She also decided that she wanted a laptop. The salesman tried to explain about the different laptops and the different price ranges, and the lady said she wanted the most expensive one. The salesman ran up her purchases and handed her the receipt.
And she FLIPPED OUT. She started yelling in Chinese "Why did her put it on one receipt? I don't want one receipt! I want two receipts!" Everyone in the store turned and stared. My aunt was mortified, and the poor salesman was asking my aunt "What does she want? I'll do whatever she wants. Just tell me what she wants me to do." After my aunt translated, the salesman said he would have to do a return and then re-run the iPad and the laptop as two separate purchases. My aunt translated, and the lady starts yelling "How do I know he's not lying? He's trying to rip me off! He's going to charge me double!" My aunt was like "I'm not translating that to the salesman". She told the lady "Look, we don't have time for this. We need to leave for the airport. Either you just take your purchases like this. Or have the salesman refund everything and we just leave." The lady took her purchases and left in a huff. On the way out, my aunt kept apologizing profusely to the salesman.
After my aunt told me what had happened, I asked her why getting separate receipts was such a big deal. And my aunt said that the iPad and the laptop were going to be gifts and the lady wanted to be able to include the receipt so the recipients could see how much she had spend on them.
I asked my aunt if that was the way they do things in China, and she said "yeah, I think they do".
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