An Unbelievable Stereotype

Last Saturday as Steve and I were enjoying our more-often-than-not Korean BBQ lunch after work, we witnessed something that definitely caused "are you shitting me?" to come out of both of our mouths.

Our favorite restaurant has a huge parking lot. We noticed this truck drive through the lot, circle around again, then settle at the farthest end of the lot. There were 4-5 men in this truck. 3 of them got out, and started walking towards the restaurant. OK, actually, they were walking towards our new car, and in our egocentric mind, we thought they were going to steal it. That was short lived as they walked right past it. :)

They got closer and closer to the restaurant. I saw that one of the guys pulled out a huge knife - like, a huge butcher knife. I sort of yelled out, "He's got a knife!" I honestly thought they were about to jump someone, rob someone or get into some sort of altercation. I got scared about what I was about to witness!

But they didn't.

Since you cannot fathom the stupidity and audacity of idiots like this, Steve and I looked at each other and said, "Maybe they're the landscapers?" The reason we thought this was because right at that moment, these 3 men stopped in front of the 6 foot tall beautiful cactus that was growing right outside the window of this restaurant and started hacking off the leaves. Now mind you, these cactus are owned by the business, are very large and gorgeous. They can also be eaten but it was not a public garden free-for-all.

It was at that moment when we both realized they weren't the landscapers - they were actually stealing the darned cactus! Chopping down someone else's property, right there in broad daylight, for all of us in the restaurant to witness.

So Steve jumped up to tell the restaurant owners, who then ran outside and got into a screaming match with these guys. We were all watching from inside, waiting and worrying that something bad would happen. Those guys had big knives.

Then, as if it wasn't expected, the owners called the cops and the 3 guys took off running. Their getaway truck also left them! One of the owners took off running after one of the guys and at that point, Steve ran outside, got into our truck and went after them, too. Thank goodness - the owners are women and we were worried they'd get hurt.

In the end, Steve and the owner found the truck parked down the road, got the license plate and gave it to the cops, who then caught the guys in the truck. We don't know what happened to the rest of them, but we hope that they got into some sort of trouble for... um, stealing? Damaging private property? Who knows.

So yes, "are you shitting me?" was definitely coming out of our mouths because we just could not believe what we saw. The crooks told the owners of the restaurant that they were stealing the cactus to eat - why? Because they were too freaking cheap or lazy to pay $1 for a bag of nopales at the local grocery store? They weren't starving - they were far from skinny and they drove a pretty big, nice truck.

It's these kinds of changes to our society - the blatant lack of respect for other's property, the common sense when it comes to simple kindness and appreciation for beauty of nature - that is causing me to dislike this country even more. The fact that there was no conscience in this situation made me want to vomit.

I don't want to live in a trash dump where stupid people who breed just take whatever they want, whenever they want.

Do you?