Cake for the Government

Requirement # 937

Provide 4 cakes and 6 cups of coffee for inspection

Provide 4 cakes and 6 cups of coffee in any container but plastic bags for inspection

Provide 4 cakes and 6 cups of coffee in any container but plastic bags for inspection before 11 AM

Provide 4 cakes and 6 cups of coffee in pizza box and plastic sealed cups for inspection before 11 AM

Provide 4 cakes and 6 cups of coffee in sealed plastic cups and sealed plastic bags for inspection before 11 AM

Provide 6 cakes and 8 cups of coffee sealed in plastic bags and plastic cups for inspection before 11 AM and bag up any dignity and patience you have left and we will dispose of that for you as well

I envisioned that my musings would be solely focused on the raw pure delight of a hot brewed cup of coffee but as it turns out there is a lot of 麻烦 (mafan) or trouble that goes into serving that cup of coffee here. Alas these are my musings about coffee and my experiences of being able to serve that coffee here in Kunming.

In order to get a particular license renewed, we literally dealt with the ebb and flow of the requirement listed above. The reason it has been amended 5 times was because of the different requirements we were given each time we went to the gov. department to turn in our materials to be inspected. It went a little like this: we make the trip to the gov. department, inquire as to what exactly needed to be done to meet this requirement, a gov. official instructs us what to do, we return back to the coffee shop, bake and brew the necessary items, return the follow day to the same gov. department, and finally we are told by the same gov. official a completely different set of instructions.

Adding to all of this was originally their reluctance to tell us what to do for this requirement because A) they weren't 100% sure they were the right department for this inspection and B) the inspection fee was unclear until they conferred and pulled a very large number out of thin air and then quoted us that. I am sure there must of been confusion because of our insistence to do all of this by the book when I am certain that most companies don't even bother and take the short cut. Otherwise, I am not sure how we were only the second company that week to apply out of the tens of thousands of companies that have to also pass this inspection every year.

the "Fictional" Inspection

I am going to tell you a "story" about a situation that may or may not have taken place in a real or fictional world country at a given point between the beginning of time until specifically October 7th. This "unknown" country may or may not have been infamous for its quality control problems. But it is here that a company or perhaps even someone saw firsthand why these quality control problems exist and why they will continue to exist for the unforeseeable but certainly indeterminable future. This "unspecified pronoun" was at "unspecified pronoun's" job and was visited by the department of Hogwash (which may or may not be the real name of a department modeled after any government department or agency.) It was the department of Hogwash (doH) that informed our "unspecified pronoun" of an upcoming inspection that may be happening in one hour or perhaps in one hour. The interesting thing was the doH was coming one hour ahead of time to not only inform our "unspecified pronoun" of the doH inspection but also of the things that needed to be changed or fixed before that inspection was to take place. So the "unspecified pronoun" made the changes suggested and when what may or may not of been the exact same people from the doH returned the "unspecified pronoun" was informed that inspection had been passed and that everything seem to look OK and nothing looked amiss. Although our "unspecified pronoun" surely had nothing to hide and only had inconsequential things to fix, the "unspecified pronoun" pondered how companies or "criminals" that did have something to hide would surely be able to hide those things within this system. Hence there forth realizing that this inspection problem would never be able to bolster quality control and “might” even encourage more problems than if there were no inspections at all.