Two sets of customers from one day at the (Thai) restaurant (1 of 2): Later customers:

This group of like (four) (kind of fat) (brown-skinned) (med students) who look vaguely (South Asian) but at least one of whose credit cards has the (Canadian) maple leaf flag on it when they've been in before, since I had checked it one time since they come in a lot but usually never tip, maybe like 12% at most, and I wanted to know where they were from.

And, immediately when they come in, the one guy is like, "Can we sit over here" and demands to go over to this part of the restaurant where we usually never sit people, then we put them over there, and it's in the middle of a period where we're getting slammed -- that day we went through four whole trays of side salads, when maybe you'd get just over two, at most -- and then they call me over like five minutes later when I'm trying to help other people who got there beforehand, and I tell them that I'll be with them in a minute, and then I get there like five-to-six minutes later and take their order, and I even run over in the middle of that to put the apps order in right away, as soon as they want chicken satay (the chicken takes forever to roast), and then they order their main meals and the one (the fattest one of the four, this very fat guy with rolling double and triple chins who's big enough to fill two chairs) orders one of the 2 fried rices that has multiple meats in it and makes like 3 modifications to it, 2 ingredients out and then "put an extra egg in, they usually don't charge me for it since I don't have the other stuff" (which seems like bullshit to me but I don't fight), and then I gather up menus and put their main meals in, and then like five minutes after that the very fat guy calls me over to check if what he ordered has chicken in it, and I'm like, "Sir, I am not sure, and I already put in the order in," and I dash over to the nearby host stand to grab a menu and I give it to him and am uncontrollably a bit snippy and am like, "Please read the description and make sure that that's the item that you want, and tell me right away if it is not, so we can stop the kitchen," and then I go over to help some other people.

And, a few minutes later I'm by there again, and he seems chastened, and he says it's right, and I tell my one (tall) (skinny) (white) sound guy coworker dude to help them the rest of the shift, since they're being little bitches with me and it's probably best if he deals with them.

"Man," he was like, when I was saying what they had done.

And, later, he was clearing plates and going to get the bills, and they were really insistent that they get it now, and then he's over there dividing up the checks and assigning the appetizers, and the (female) owner with the tired face comes by, and she asks him to print out their bills, since they had called her over too and asked her to get on it.

"What a pain in the ass those people are," I was like, as soon as she was gone. 

And, I told him that there was this function where you could split up the individual items into fractions in case people wanted to pay for portions of one plate on separate bills, but they were the kind of customers I'd never tell that to, since they'd want one appetizer split in 2 and put on 2 of the 4 bills and maybe like another one put onto 3 bills and it would just be chaos, and besides, they're assholes.

And later, we go to clear the table, and tips are maybe like 8-12%, with one like 15%, and someone had left an empty plastic Gatorade bottle as trash on the floor behind the one seat towards the wall, they just left it on the floor, they had never even bothered to pick it up and put it on the table.

"I bet they're training to be surgeons," I was like to my coworker. "Surgeons can be assholes like that."

Addendum.

I had recommended the one local brewery to my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker as a place to kill time between split shifts since she likes coffee and they have a decent cold brew coffee there for like three bucks, and she went there the very next day and told me, and said she liked their coffee.

Like a few weeks later, I asked her if she'd been there again, and she said no, she just goes to the coffee shop next door now, since the other place is too far away.

(It's like a three or four minute walk.)

A coworker's perspective.

The other week, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker was telling me that she thought she could do everything alone here, but she is really beginning to miss her aunt.

"I have to shop and I go home and I have to cook everything," she was like. "My aunt, she ask me what I want, and she cook everything!"

"That's funny," I was like, "I thought that you missed her because you love her, and instead it's because it's like she's your servant."

And, she just laughed brightly, and was like, "I am very lazy."

She also said that the crab rangoons here at the restaurant where we work are good, but they're not as good as the last place that she used to work, since there they would grate up lemon zest into the cream cheese.

Restaurant factoids.

The other week at the (Thai) restaurant, this (young) (professional) (30-something) (Chinese-from-China) couple came in for a late lunch, and they had never eaten there before and wanted something fast, and wanted my recommendation for an appetizer.

"I would order the crab rangoons," I was like.

"What are crab rangoons?", the bespectacled and slightly moustached guy was like.

"They're wontons with cream cheese and crab, deepfried," I was like. "They're served at Chinese restaurants here, and it's an American food that I think began in California."

"Oh, Chinese-American," the elegantly-dressed lady was like, intrigued.

And, they ordered them.

"They are good, and they are so beautiful, this way they look," she was like, later, when I asked her about what she thought about the crab rangoons, referring to the way that they're crimped at the top.

And, since I had read the Wikipedia history of the crab rangoon after I had initially talked to them, I explained that it turns out that they're actually part of an American post-World War II obsession with the South Pacific that began after soldiers returned from those areas, and was reflected in things like popular music and tiki bars.

(They had never heard of tiki bars.)

And, I said that it seems that they were invented at such a South Pacific place in California, but spread to Chinese restaurants more broadly, afterwards.

"Oh," they were like, interested.

My one professor friend who studies (modern) (Czech) literature also told me once that massaman curry is her favorite (Thai) dish, and that it actually comes from the word "Muslim," so sometimes I tell that to customers, too, when they order it.

And, I don't claim that it's true, only that a professor friend who's a "word nerd" told me that.

People don't know how to react to that one.

Two recent dream bits (2 of 2): Volleyball.

Last month I dreamnt --

I'm back on the wooden-floored gym of my high school, but I'm the age that I am now and it's just a gym I'm in, it's not associated with that particular memory, and I am playing with this team that I can't see, and I am given this incredibly heavy volleyball that's easily like fifteen or twenty pounds and a bit flattish besides, and I'm expected to serve it, only when I do, it goes up just a little bit and like just four feet over in a very flattened arc and just hits the floor, and someone is telling me that I'm doing it wrong and I need to use my shoulder muscles, but when I do that, the same thing happens, and I'm starting to wonder how using your muscles like that would even be possible, to serve a volleyball like that...

...and then, I wake up.

. . .

Two recent dream bits (1 of 2): Balcony.

Last month I dreamnt --

I'm on a balcony high up on the side of a residential skyscraper that resembles one in the city that I used to live in that I had visited once for a party held by this random (Spanish) (psychiatrist) acquaintance, and I'm leaning back in a four-legged chair, but I'm afraid to lean it against the balcony railing since I'm afraid of it giving way and my falling, but, I do, and then I feel myself leaning much farther back than I expected and suddenly everything is changing around my peripheral vision and is becoming these vast overlapping sheets of blank gray and beige color moving forwards more and more rapidly...

And then, I wake up.

. . .

"Super secret Thai food."

Since one of the (Guatemalan) cooks left after like ten years and went back to (Guatemala), we have a new cook now, this like (early 50s) guy who's (Thai).

And, a few times he's made up some special lunch for himself and my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker.

"What's that?", I was like, one day, when she brought up something special from the kitchen at the end of shift.

"Panang curry," she was like, "But very, very hot."

"Ok," I was like, then I was like, "I want to know about your super secret Thai food," and then I started joking that it was so secret and forbidden, that I can never even touch it, since then I would suddenly die, since it's only for (Thai) people.

And, now we joke about "super secret Thai food" every now and then.

Also, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker said she always likes to order pork for her staff meal on Thursdays, since that's when the meat delivery comes in and it's freshest.

("Good strategy," my one [tall] [skinny] [white] sound guy coworker was like, when we worked the next Thursday lunch together and I suggested we order pork and I told him why.)

And, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker noticed that the kitchen staff were throwing away all these perfectly good fatty little pork bits after they trimmed up the meat for serving to customers, so she told the cook to save them for the Friday staff meal, and then on that Friday he made them up into a standard stirfry for us, only it was super better than usual, since the meat was a lot fattier and a lot more delicious in the stirfry.

("That's always that way," my one [tall] [skinny] [white] sound guy coworker was like, when I told him about that new use of the fatty pork scraps that had started going on.)