In the afternoon, my friend and I had a conversation over the phone to meet at seven at a restaurant nearby. Since I arrived early, I decided to take a table.
It’s evening now. I’m sitting in a cafe at Koteshwar. The girl across the table is seated with a confused-looking fellow, who might be in question, a worker at a local furniture-maker. They speak with a low voice, look at each other and leave.
I take a few sips of the liquid the restaurant calls coffee. I think whether my stomach will get upset over this issue. I take a quick glance around, only to see the dissatisfied faces of some waiters. Are they underpaid? I try not to think over their financial inadequacy. Suddenly my friend enters view.
He is a vet, and a most polite fellow. He talks with reason, and gives his personal point of view in most cases. Just as he gets seated, he mumbles a comment about a waiter’s face, “Is he underpaid?”
How much I’d like to know!
Our conversation turns towards cost-estimation for running a restaurant. We start with the available floor space, the number of tables, the size of kitchen, the count of waiters, the decoration and of course, the menu itself! Our conclusion: it takes a minimum of $15,000 to call a restaurant restaurant, otherwise we’d be running something else in the name of a restaurant.
Suddenly a solemn-looking man on the next table stands up and comes towards us. He puts down his files on our table, pulls up a chair and says, “I’m waiting for the owner here, to settle his debt of this restaurant.” Delighted, my friend asks the amount, on which he curtly replies, “around $ 15,000.”
The vet looks at me and gives me a twisted wink!
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