Tuesday, January 23, 2024

Christmas at work (3 of 3): Yet more fun.

The last day at work or so before our Christmas closing but after the Santa hat stuff started, I walk in, and my one (Guatemalan) coworker who we started the diablo joke about says hi to me and is like, Que pas-ho ho ho.

A few times I had to ask the kitchen to do stuff, too, and I’d always be like, “Ho ho ho, more work for you.”

Beyond that, we closed early at eight-thirty the final night and pulled the blinds and had a Christmas party, with seafood soup and little steaks and chips and guac and a whole roast turkey and some sweets, and also a very good (Thai) custard cake and a (Thai) custard and this very traditional (Thai) custard thing where you take one of those small little pumpkin gourds like you see at Halloween, core it, dump custard in the center, steam it, and then cut it into slices, where each one ends up being like a bite of custard and then a bite of steamed pumpkin, and each piece looks all nice and layered.

And, the owners had bought a number of items like cookie-tins and giftcards, and we played this game where you had to flip a water bottle and get it to stand upright on its end and then you’d draw a number and get that prize, and everyone would eventually get one, because the owners had used the RSVP list to buy enough prizes for everyone.

Among the guests were the (young) (dressed-up) wife (!!!) and the four-year-old child (!!!!) of my one (Guatemalan) coworker who we started the diablo joke about – they met because he began talking to her over Facebook, and she works at a local country club, first in the dishroom for two years and now in salad bar and she would do kitchen, but she’s not tall enough to reach the stove – and also the two-year-old-ish daughter of my one (highly indigenous) (Guatemalan) coworker with the silver tooth or two.

(At one point the young [Guatemalan-American] son wanted to play the plastic-bottle game, and they gave it to him, and he threw it way too high into the air, and it was coming down near him and so he ducked and put his hands over his head to guard it, all very cute.)

Afterwards, too, they sent us home with the extra food, and I basically asked for the turkey carcass so I could boil it to make soup – turkey broth is so good! – and so I got a plastic takeout bag and schlepped it home with that, in addition to some other food that I stuck in a washed-out-and-reused takeout container that I always have with me, to take my shift dinner home in.

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