Some memories of the graduation rush this year…

…at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now:

1) A special dish of oranges is out in front of the odd red sign in the corner with (Chinese) characters on it, that has something to do with the house spirit.

2) A special glass vase of white tulips is on the back counter near the cash register, and several of them are severely wilting, and so I point to one that’s drooping and am like, “That’s me,” and then my one (older) (Thai) coworker who’s a whiz at the phones point to the one that’s like fully bent over and she mimicks the severely drooping pose, like making a joke that she's even more tired, and so I point back to the first white tulip and am like, “That’s me, white and tired.”

3) Just like he did last year, on the second day of graduation weekend the (male) (Thai) restaurant owner says to not give water out to customers when they sit down, but to instead ask for beverage orders first, which leads to very few bigger bills even as it also causes a lot of extra work, since it leads to extra trips for every single table that comes in, since most everyone just wants water.

4) My one (younger) (Guatemalan) coworker is very tired, so I start calling her “mi fuerte” (my strong one), which seems to mildly amuse her, and my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker says she’s dead, and we start this thing where we ask her, “Are you alive?”, and she’s like, “Nooo,” and also sometimes like, "Noooo, I'm dead."

5) At one table of a (very upscale) (South Asian) couple and their (son), the first wineglass has lipstick marks on it, and then it turns out there’s a spot on the table that needs wiping, and then as I pick up plates to bus them, some fleck of some kind of juice flies up in an arc and lands on the (dad’s) (lighter-colored) (expensive-looking) slacks, and he visibly flinches as the stain occurs (tip was 12%, and they did *not* seem happy with the restaurant).

6) At a big (South Asian) family table that’s there at the same time as a lot of people arrive, they have to make do with paper takeout menus since all of our full-size menus are in circulation with other tables, and then when I come over to give them some full-size menus that freed up, the one (older) (South Asian) lady is like, “Oh no, this is better,” and she keeps her takeout menu, and I say, “Oh no, are you so tired from graduation, that you can't even hold up a big menu?”, and everyone at the table chuckles delightedly and is like oh ho ho ho ho.

7) Because we're using for customer seating our regular takeout tables that we keep unpaid orders on and instead we're keeping the unpaid orders back on the counter all mixed in with the prepaid delivery app orders that we normally keep separate, one night I send an unpaid order home with some husband who was picking up everything for his wife without getting him to pay, and so we have to call and call their house and finally right before close they get our messages and call back and they give us their credit card number over the phone, to pay for the unpaid order that I accidentally sent home with him, unpaid.

8) As a condiment, someone requests ketchup (??? – oddly enough, it turns out that we do keep some ketchup on hand in the kitchen, since it’s an ingredient in the token sweet-and-sour stirfry that we have on the menu as something recognizable to people who usually don’t eat [Thai] food).

9) The entire first day, I don’t see the (older) (Chinese-American) cook, since I’m too busy with stuff upfront to even go back into the kitchen.

10) My night-time reading after work is the Gospel of Thomas.

11) In the middle of the afternoon, some (younger) (South Asian) person calls up and says to reserve a table for 10+ and they’ll be coming in 15 minutes, and then no-one ever comes.

12) A(n older) (South Asian) woman gets served water without ice, but because it’s actually from a water pitcher where ice had recently melted away, she says it’s too cold, and she needs room temperature water (I tell her that I’ll try, but then other stuff from other tables needs to be taken care of first, and then that request just slips away and I never find out what happens).

13) A (Chinese from China) student group of two has one woman who orders a pad kee mao, and when it comes to the table, she realizes that she meant to say pad kee mao woonsen instead (i.e. the same dish, but with a different type of noodle), and so she sends it back, despite her being the one that made the mistake.

14) A big (South Asian) family of (twelve) is there and it’s clear that most are ordering their own dishes but several adults at the one end of the table are sharing, and when I check in to see how many big plates they need for those people to eat family style, the one gentleman says to bring one for everyone at the table, so twelve (?!), and then when I (respectfully) ask specifically how many people specifically need those extra big plates, they count among themselves, and it turns out to be two (two).

15) Overall, everyone agrees that it was busier last year, since tips are on the high side of good but not great, and the restaurant isn’t jammed start-to-close like it was the previous year, though it does seem that business wasn’t so slow in the month afterwards like it was last year, which someone says might be attributable to how the one local high school has a different and much later graduation date than the college, so maybe that portion of customers was sticking around and going to restaurants in the month after graduation, unlike last year.