The other week I was asking my one (newer) (tall) (Thai) coworker how business had been the previous weeknight when she worked.
"Very busy, four or five tables after nine," she was like.
"So how were tips?", I was like.
"Not that good," she was like. "All Indian."
1) A (fatter) (very round-faced) (shoulder-length-haired) (younger) (bespectacled) (South Asian) woman who sits on the opposite side of the table from a (vaguely schlubby) (bespectacled) (South Asian) guy who ultimately ends up paying for the bill even though she says it's separate checks, and who says "We need a few minutes" in a very b*tchy way when I ask if they need any beverages besides water or would like any appetizer order put in right away while I'm there at the table, and who says "no fish sauce, no oyster sauce" in a very b*tchy way when she puts in her order, and who later when I clear the table and bring her her to-go box and remove excess dishes and silverware, asks me to bring her a spoon, the fork sitting out there on her plate among the remnants of her fried rice (she can't use a fork to scrape rice into a to-go box?!), and then later I walk by and I see a light bulb go off in her (fat) (Indian princess) head but I just pretend like I didn't see it and I just walk on by, and I see her wait a while and then ultimately stroll up to the counter to ask for a plastic bag to carry her take-out in, which she hadn't had enough foresight to think she needed when she originally asked for a to-go box.
(It was $3 tip on a $34 bill, paid for by the guy.)
2) A (South Asian) family of three with a (college-age son) come in like twenty minutes after the hour right when we're closing, and I come out from cleaning the bathrooms only to have my (chubby) (Thai) coworker tell me they're there and to go take their order, and from what they're ordering and how quickly they're ordering I can tell she told them that they needed to order from a limited menu and quickly, and when I dash to go put that in, I tell them we need any dessert order now, too, before the kitchen cleans that station since they close at a quarter to the hour, and the (balding) (dull tan-skinned) (bespectacled) (fervent-eyed) (father) says something about how they want dessert at the end of the meal, so I tell him that that's not really possible now like a normal meal here because it's so late, and he says something about how they can prepare it immediately before the kitchen closes, and the (thoughtful-eyed) (arranged marriage?) (squat) (darker-skinned) wife steps in to calm him down and says something about how it's okay, and then later towards the end of the meal they need boxes and the husband specifies they need two big boxes, and I just say we have different types of boxes and what are they taking with them, and they point it out, and I say I can bring a small styrofoam box and a small plastic tub and they can fit the rice in the plastic tub, but the wife says no, they'd like that separately, do you have a rice box, and I say, yes, we can bring it, and it turns out there's no rice boxes by the host stand, so I bring them the small styrofoam box and the small plastic tub and I say that I have to go back to the back and get a rice box, and I do that -- they're sitting all the way at the front of the restaurant! -- and then I come back and the wife is chuckling and gesturing to the boxed rice and is like, "Oh ho ho, we just put the rice in the styrofoam box, bring us another small styrofoam box!", even though she'd just specified that she needed a rice box and she was aware that I had just made a special trip for that, and then I go get one, and like five minutes later her husband is up at the front of the restaurant, and he is demanding a big styrofoam box and a coworker of mine gives him one, and two minutes later when I go to clear more stuff from their table I can see that the last dish is now put in the big styrofoam box, and the second small styrofoam box that I had just brought them is sitting out on the table, unused.
"Why are Indian people like that?", my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker was like, shaking her head when I told her what they did.
Like, they changed their order on ***take-out boxes*** several times, where I made two special and ultimately unnecessary trips at their specification, one for the ricebox and one for the small Styrofoam box.
I almost did my "working with people with dementia" communication strategy from my eldercare days, where I would state directly, "I am confused with what is happening. I was told I needed to bring a ricebox and I made a special trip, and now that ricebox is not needed. And then I was told that I needed to bring a second small Styrofoam box, and now that box is not needed. What is happening here? I am confused. Did something happen to change the requirements for takeout boxes?"
I mean, I swear.
I didn't even bother looking at the tip after they left, lest it p*ss me off.
(Overall that night though tips were great, on top of base wage I was clocking over $32 an hour.)
A stand at the farmer's market had some sour cherries the other day, so I scooped them up, since I haven't seen them for sale there before and they're something that they really never sell at stores.
The next day, then, I ran to the local hippie co-op to get some ethically-sourced sour cream, too, so I can make Hungarian sour cherry soup.
I also asked my dad if he remembered my grandfather ever making that.
"Yeah, I think so, a few times," he was like, but then he said what he especially remembers was how he'd use them to make something like a "hooch," where he'd soak them in vodka somehow and almost make something like a brandy.
My new tennis shoes for work that I bought around the turn of the year are already dead:
Before the soles even wore through -- which they were so close to do doing! -- the leather pulled up at the front from the tall rubber sole that was supposed to encase the shoe-leather, making a big floppy mess that could trip me whenever the leather would pull out from the rubber encasement.
They were Levis brand, and they did not last at all like I'd expected -- I didn't even get them wet or anything!
I'd really like to see what Origen looked like, and how he behaved in the world.
Like, who was this man.
So, like last month I started a batch of homemade sauerkraut, with some onion and some dill and some corn kernels all mixed in, like a (Romanian) colleague had told me aeons ago that his grandmother used to make, and that I had tried out and then adapted as my standard way to make sauerkraut, when I can get fresh corn and dill.
Anyhow, I honestly think that this is my first batch of homemade sauerkraut that I've made since the pandemic, somehow I let it go during then.
It's really so exciting to just walk by this big glass jar, and it's just sitting there bubbling and belching on your kitchen counter, there's something so weird and dangerous about it.
I use a big glass jar that I fit a glass bowl into to weigh the sauerkraut down, and then I usually pour cheap olive oil around the bowl on top of the liquid, to create an extra seal against air, in case a cabbage piece floats to the surface, since you don't want it exposed to the air, since bad bacteria could land on it and start to multiply and it could form a "bridge" down to below where through that single piece all that bad bacteria would spread and multiply and ruin the rest of the submerged cabbage.
I mean, it works, though usually all the bubbles push the olive oil up and over into the bowl, so like once or twice or even three times a day when it really gets going, I have to push the bowl down so that it presses the cabbage down and releases bubbles from down in there, and then after a bit I let the bowl back up back to its normal position and I take a turkey baster and scoop up the olive oil that got pushed into it and I squirt it back around the sides of the bowl, so that it's sitting on the liquid and forming a protective layer again.
Often, I think about getting glass marbles, like you see around flowers in some elegant vases. If they were non-toxic and sterile, they almost seem like they'd be the best way to weigh cabbage down. Enough of them on top of it, and no way any cabbage could float up, ever.
Anyhow, I was telling my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker about this, and it inspired her to start up a batch of (Thai) honey-fermented garlic.
She said she'd bring some in so I could try, when it's ready.
