Sometimes stories of wonderful care for the customer shows up in the oddest places, like a massage parlor on the Lower East Side.

“I’m sure I contributed to the spread of illegal human trafficking,” a reader writes. ” So yeah, there was a bit of guilt, not to mention I’m married. And while this wasn’t my first time doing this, it was my first time going to a house of ill repute and it’s something in general that I hadn’t done in years. I thought my life was different nowadays.

I’ll blame it on the heat.”

There’s a happy ending, inside…

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This is a story I would love to submit to the Times for it’s Metro Diary, but somehow I think they’d pass. It’s a story of exemplary customer service, so maybe it’s good for Consumerist…

…When I walk in, I see I’ve arrived during a slow period. An elderly woman is hunched over a stove, poking her tongs at roasting spare ribs. Another elderly woman is serving a batch of those ribs to three young women sitting around a counter. All the women were eating them with little plastic gloves on their hands.

As I’m guided to a bedroom through the kitchen, they make a joke, giggle, and ask if I want some spare ribs. I say yes, as I love the roasted ribs I get at many of the Chinese joints in Chinatown. Ha ha ha.

The girl and I tussle for an hour, I shower, and as I’m ready to leave, Mama-San (I swear!) tells me to sit. She has put aside a plate of ribs for me. I have to eat them. It’s like my own grandmother is there. They are amazing, these delicately spiced, gingery, scallion-y, ribs, with flavor all the way through. You can’t find these at any of the restaurants I’ve been to, Korean or Chinese. She handed me the box with the plastic gloves, and I put them on. As I eat, I begin to sweat, and the woman I was just with (again, I swear) wipes the sweat from my brow. She stands over me, attending to me: “Do I need water?”: “Do I want rice?”; and “Is it good?”

I left feeling the guilt and shame that comes from acting out in ways that are not healthy to the rest of my life, but full of laughter at the homeyness of it all.

And yes, I am going to go back.”

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