It All Looks the Same

It’s a lovely upscale nail salon staffed by women from China.  There are no younger women, the technicians are all of a certain age. They have given themselves Western sounding names… Grace, Marie, Mary, Susie, and a Jully. Each woman wears a name tag and the letters on the tags are in a square font. So ‘Jully’ looks rather the same coming and going.  I can only suppose, this is the reason she put the name tag on upside down. Her English is very limited to: yes, no, nice, thank you, so when it was suggested that her name tag was upside down on the pocket of her lab coat, she gestured to the other pocket.  No, I shook my head, and tried to convey turning it around by drawing a circle in the air. To this and other demonstrative attempts at sign language, she just smiled and went on about her business. Of course if I was in China, with a Chinese name tag and the lines had no meaning, I would do no better.