A guy shared this story on Ukrainian Facebook.
There is a tax office where he lives. And next to the tax office there is one of those kiosks that abound in Ukraine. People who visit the tax office constantly come up to the kiosk to ask if they have a Xerox machine. Eventually, the owner of the kiosk got so fed up that he put up a notice “There is no Xerox here!”
Two weeks later, a new notice appeared: “THERE IS NO XEROX HERE!!!!!!”
A month later, there was a new notice: “No Xerox!!!! And I don’t know where you can effing find one!”
And a couple of months later, yet another notice: “If you ask me about a Xerox, you’ll be fined 10,000 hryvnya!!!”
Then a Chinese guy bought the kiosk.
On the next day, the Chinese guy installed an old beaten up Xerox at the kiosk.
Two months later, the Chinese guy installed a new color Xerox at the kiosk.
A year later, the Chinese guy opened a small copy center.
Two years later, the Chinese guy started building a hairdresser salon next to the kiosk and began coming to work in an old beaten up Porsche Cayenne.
So the Ukrainian fellow publishes the story in Facebook, right? There are thousands of comments. The very first one is, “Fuck that fat bugger Poroshenko! It’s all his fault!” The second one is, “If this were a normal country, we’d have a government that would put copiers in all tax offices, and we wouldn’t need any effing Chinese to come open copy centers.”
The funny thing is, when a Ukrainian emigrates someplace, s/he also starts opening metaphorical copy centers and driving metaphorical Porsche Cayennes. So hey, fluidity, right? It’s a funny thing.
