Tiredness.

That tired feeling of a messy apartment and multiple open projects can really get to me sometimes. It’s like everything is disorganized and weird and you can’t get it under control.

Right now I think a big part of it is the set-up that I have against bedbugs, with diatomaceous earth around the edges of my room and my minimal bedroom stuff bagged and boxed to ward off against bedbug infestation, and none of that really changeable to neaten up until 6-8 weeks have passed since the last bites (thankfully that only happened twice and all within like one week, so the time will elapse relatively soon, unless some have somehow survived my treatments and resurface, which would reset the clock).

The amount of (small-to-larger-sized) trips that I’ve taken this year is also getting to me – it’s stacking up to be like 7 trips in 7 months, all of which involves laundry and packing and sometimes complicated multi-stage transportation arrangements since the area I live in is a bit remote, and on top of that I have to try to wake up early and set my getting-up-and-going-to-bed times back to something more normal, since overall I have a later daily-life schedule due to the nights of restaurant work.

Usually I’d just take a day and clean my apartment and do laundry and everything would be like “Ahhhhhhh” again, but that’s not really possible now until the window with bedbugs has passed, which is all the way on the other side of another longer trip that I have to figure out and pack for, all while my apartment is disarray.

The big factor here really is the (perhaps dead by now) bedbugs – no sense of order and cleanliness and mental space until I can stop treatments and clean up everywhere after what I'd set out and arranged against them.

A statement of my father…

...when I called my parents on his birthday but I had forgotten that it was his birthday because it was a crazy week for me, all even though my mother had told me the day before to remember that it’s his birthday:

Him (getting on the phone, after we greet each other, and then after a pause on his end): “[My name], it’s my birthday.”

Addendum addendum addendum.

I remember one night I went around to tables at like 9:25pm like I always do to get the last dessert orders for the labor-intensive desserts, and at this one (South Asian) table with an older couple and maybe their (college-age) kid, the gruff dad wanted a dessert, but he was like, "At the end of the meal," and I was like, "I'm sorry, sir, but the kitchen closes at 9:45pm and they often start to clean that station first, so we really need the dessert orders now and they'll be making them soon," at which point I apologetically add that because of the time of night, we can't provide a standard meal experience like we could even a half hour earlier.

And, the dad requests that we make the dessert at 9:44pm.

Of course, because that's a rather clearcut experience -- tableside conversation, no interruptions and "catching you off-guard" peppering with requests outside of the normal order process -- I'm like, "I'm very sorry sir, but that's not possible, would you like to place the dessert order now" (and they did place that order then).

But ,still!

"Make it at nine forty-four."

It's like some "gotcha" game where they're going to ride technicalities hard and do whatever the f*ck they want, "You're open, so you're at our mercy!".

How do you even deal with customers like that, especially if they amp up their behavior and start making multiple out-of-left-field, off-the-wall requests.

Addendum addendum.

Quite interestingly, the very next shift that I worked, *another* group of four people came in at like *exactly* the same time quite late at night, and although I didn't handle the entire table, it went smoothly, despite one mild misunderstanding, as can happen.

It was basically some (middle-aged) (white) guy, his (Latina) wife, their little little kid (a small boy), and the old (pretty monolingual) (Latina) (mother-in-law), and my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones seated them and I'm not sure of everything she told them then, but right before I went over like 1-2 minutes later to go check in on that table for their entree orders, I look at the computer monitor, and there's already 2 appetizer orders placed -- presumably, my coworker had gotten that order as soon as they sat down, and sent it to the kitchen right away.

So, I go to the table, apologize because it's late, and the guy has already organized the table and gives me two orders, but I notice his (extremely tired looking) wife is looking at the curry section of the menu, so I'm like, "I'm very sorry, but it's late and because of cooking times curries are very hard to make for dine-in right now," and I direct her attention to noodles, fried rices, and stir fries.

And, she looks a bit braindead, so I'm like, "Do you need a minute?", and I ask if I can go send in the other 2 orders right then so the kitchen can get them started, and they're like yes of course, so I do, and when I return like 1 minute later, she had made up her mind (a fried rice), and so I go and send that in too.

And, as the entrees come out starting like 9:40pm, they all just kind of devour the food because they're starving but had wanted to sit down in a restaurant to eat (my hunch is that they were in the middle of moving), and most of the food is gone when it's just turning 10pm, at which point the guy looks around and asks for boxes for takeout for what's left (two entrees for 3 people in 20 minutes!).

They also stacked plates for us to clean up the table quicker.

Just quick, easy, smooth. No delay of order or extended haggling among themselves about the shared entrees (both groups did shared entrees!), an attempt to listen to what we were telling them, no special requests even though the kitchen is closing, no chaotic multiple additions to order made through unexpected interruptions outside of the normal order process, but rather quick staging and getting in orders ASAP as soon as they knew them, and most of all no attempt to have a normal leisurely meal instead of "the quick bite" that is appropriate for a closing restaurant.

My hunch is that the four (South Asian) customers on that previous shift probably have a nice list of degrees and these other people from the next night may not have even gone to college, but these people have manners and consideration for others, rather than a default stance of being served and not even having to listen to what people in "the servant caste" tell you, however clearly or respectfully.

Addendum.

I think a part of the problem with (South Asian) customers is that they make crazy-ass requests that you just can't anticipate, even coming up to your elbow to do so, or doubling back and changing what they had just said and had set in motion, so they catch you off-guard and push and push and make things go their way, and it's like the chaos puts you in situations you've never anticipated ,and since you always try to please the customer, oftentimes they can get away with really whack demands.

I think in the future when any customer comes up to interrupt and change their order as we key it in, I'll be deferential, but later go the table and reiterate that these things happens etc. etc and we try to honor requests, but we do ask that they try to have their full and final orders together when they give them at the table, since interrupting someone at the computer can lead to mistakes and delays, as can asking the kitchen to change something once the order has been sent.

I also think I had been assuming that people were overall listening to me, when they don't necessarily do so. 

With customers like that who come in late, I need to state what I always do, and if they're hemming and hawing at the table, reiterate that we need their order now, or the appetizers that they can give us, and reiterate the meal strictures, especially if they start looking elsewhere in the menu, and if they seem insistent, maybe say something like "it is the time of night where you can have a quick bite here, but it seems like you're looking for a wider variety of what we usually offer -- perhaps you'd like a few more minutes to decide, and order something for takeout, since we can make everything on the menu for takeout?",

Unpleasant (South Asian) customers (2 of 2): Repeat customers, with friends.

Like a week after that, a (fairly normal-behaving) (meat-eating) (South Asian) (Pakistani?) couple who have been in to the restaurant multiple times before came in at like 9:28pm with two friends, and usually at that time you can just squeeze people in if you manage expectations, so I did my standard spiel and was like, “Hi, it’s getting late to eat in, but you have time for a quick bite if you order something like fried rice or noodles or stir fries, nothing breaded, no curries, and we need your orders right away, like in a few minutes,” and they seemed agreeable and sat down, and while my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker got water, I waited right there to get their order.

And, they sat there and talked among each other negotiating everything – most tables throw open the menus and order before sitting down and are like, “Okay, one pad thai beef and one pad kee mao tofu,” and get everything started ASAP, within less than a minute – but here it was going on like three or four minutes, to where it was like 9:32pm and the kitchen closes at 9:45pm, and then the one (previously normal-behaving) girl who had been in previously starts mentioning curry, and not just any curry, but a more labor intensive one involving multiple stages of cooking, and I had to repeat myself and be like, “Sorry, curry is no longer available if you want to dine in,” and then when they want some dish vegetarian that can’t be made vegetarian, the (previously normal-behaving) guy mentions something about a vegan stir-fry with tofu we’ve had, but can we do it with chicken, and I’m like, “I’m not sure about that and this is really not the time of night to request special orders,” and the guy is like, “Can you ask?”, and I demur and say I'd have to go to the back to check, and he asks for that, and at that point my one (older) (Thai) coworker who’s a whiz at the phones comes to wipe off a table near me, and so I ask her while I stand there and she’s like, “Okay,” so I confirm their two entrees and at that point they also ask for an easy deep-fried appetizer that they could have told me much earlier, and I run up to go enter it all in and get it to the kitchen ASAP, and then when I’m entering in their special mods and am trying to concentrate to get it all in quickly and correctly so the kitchen can start cooking, suddenly their friend is up by the front of the restaurant by my elbow interrupting me, and is like “Oh, and we want a papaya salad too” -- something in a part of the menu that I had directed them away from! -- and her interruption and request throws me and I tell her I’ll be with her, and so I send what they wanted in, and then I go back to the table, and I ask, and they want that vegetarian too only that takes making separate sauce and it’s late, so I tell them that that’s not really possible right now because of the extra cooking involved, so they’re like, “Okay, make it not vegetarian,” so without really thinking I go to send that in, and then they say something about an extra side of rice for them all, too, when I go back to pick up the menus.

Then, at that point the appetizers are already out and they’re wolfing them down, and the first entrée comes out – fried rice – only, because they did that special order that the kitchen had never done before, the cook got confused, and he put chicken in the fried rice instead of tofu, so I bring it out nonetheless and ask them what they want to do, is it possible to make the other dish tofu, then, instead of chicken, so they still have one chicken dish and one tofu dish, and they’re like okay, so I go tell the cook, but he’s tired and in the middle of closing up shop and making several take-out orders, and he makes that last entrée as it was listed (chicken and not the standard tofu) and not what I told him (tofu, versus the chicken replacing the tofu), so it’s chicken, and by the time we get it, it’s past the time when our kitchen is closed.

“What do I do?”, I ask my one (older) (Thai) coworker who’s a whiz at the phones, when I see that it’s chicken and not tofu, and they have no tofu dish.

“Ask them if they want it, or if we take it off their bill,” she was like.

So, I go over and ask them, and it’s like this ripple goes through the table, and their (wide-eyed) (crazy-eyed) (non-meat eating) (presumably Indian) (female) friend who I’ve never seen before starts saying that they need it with tofu, and I’m like, “There are two available options now, it is late and the kitchen just closed, do you want this with chicken, or do you want it taken off your bill,” and the girl tells us to go make it in tofu and is like, “What am I supposed to do, sit here and starve,” and I repeat myself, and then they push back and say something, and I’m like, “It is very late here, there was a delay in placing the order, the table insisted on a special order that confused the kitchen, and now the kitchen is closed, which of the two paths forward do you want, do you want the dish, or do you want it taken off your bill,” and at that point their friend blows up and is like, “It’s your fault, you told us the restaurant was open and we believed you and we came here to eat," and she tells us again to go re-cook it, and then when I again reiterate the chaos-steps of their order and mention that there's language barriers too with the kitchen and special orders can be tough and it caused problems tonight, the (previously normal-behaving) guy slumps down in his chair and is like, “I don’t want to hear this,” because I guess it's okay for them to be pushy and chaotic and do whatever they want with no consideration at all for restaurant staff or what restaurant staff tell them, but they can’t bear the consequences of their own actions, or have the restaurant not be their perfect image of everything they need it to be exactly when they want it, even when they are explicitly told under what conditions a meal can be had at that time of night (limited menu, quick and decisive order, in and out).

So, at that point my one (older) (Thai) coworker shows up at my elbow and is like, “Go ask the kitchen if he will make it,” and I go back in and the (younger) (Lao) cook is looking so tired, but he says he will, and he does, even though it’s getting to be five minutes past when the kitchen is always closed

And, though the first entrée came out at 9:40-ish and then the tofu vergan stir fry afterwards, the *four* of them eat their *two* entrees just like any leisurely normal meal like nothing had happened, and it’s like 10:10/10:15 for when they finally leave – I don’t even look at the tip – and at that point they’ve probably cost the restaurant around $12-15 in staff wages and then the cost of the re-made special order, which wipes out any profit from their table, whatsoever, since it was just them there and everyone was waiting around for them to finish, when any other (typical of that time of night) table that had come in at 9:25pm would have been able to order something quick and been out by 9:50/9:55pm, even boxing anything that they had left at that point, apologetically.

Just rude all around – not even listening to when I specifically spell out that it’s a limited menu and it’s late and they need to order quick (meal negotiations among themselves! an ask for a curry that I told them could no longer be made! a request for a special order! a change to the order where someone interrupts me as I input their order! a second addition to the order, albeit for an additional rice which is no biggie! a leisurely meal when I had told them it’s late and I use the phrase “quick bite” like I always do!).

It's like they kept hemming and hawing and firing in "out of left field" demands and bent the whole restaurant around them and pitched fits and pushed, and they didn’t have a care in the world for us at all, even to listen with basic respect to the basic parameters of what I’d specifically stated as to what the restaurant can do that time of night immediately when they walked in and I told them it was late, and all of that happened for people not ordering all that much of a bill between them.

Later, too, when he clocked out, the (younger) (Lao) cook apologized to me for messing up the meal when he came out of the kitchen to leave, too, and I told him it was no biggie, the table was weird and crazy and insisted on a confusing special order and we gave it to them.

I also told my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker that I was never going to wait on that table again, because I didn’t like their behavior with me. She said that I shouldn’t have to, and that she suspected they would never come in again to eat late, but I told her it didn’t matter, I didn’t want to deal with the (previously normal-behaving) couple again, even if it was just the two of them during normal business hours behaving like they always have before. Just very, very inconsiderate people who were not even listening to you and just went ahead with doing whatever they wanted, although that didn’t surface in them until they were under the conditions of a situation in which limits were sought to be put onto their behavior.

Unpleasant (South Asian) customers (1 of 2): A new customer.

The other week when I was working lunch shift and it was busy – lunch shifts are typically only two people – multiple tables walked in at once, including a (younger) (South Asian) couple who my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker went to go help while I was helping another table, and then all of a sudden she was like, “I’m going to get ice cream” – i.e., that she had to go all the way down to the basement cooler, to get ice cream for some order, and to keep a watch on everything since I'm now all by myself.

Finally, too, after they left, she was like, “Did you see that?”, and she told me that the (woman) of the couple had ordered ice cream with their meal, and when she asked her when she wanted it, the woman looked her in the eye and was like, “Now.  NOW” – and then, when she stopped everything to go get it right then and especially when her work was needed with the other tables who had walked in around then, not to mention everything else that was going on, the woman did not even touch the ice cream, but ate it after the couple's entrees were served and they’d eaten them.

Later that day, I was on the bus and we were stopped at the light, so I took a picture and sent it to my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker and texted her something like “Bus, make the light turn green. Now. NOW.”

Over the course of the evening I also sent her several more jokes like that.

. . .

(Tip was $2 on the couple's like $35 bill…  I said that if I had known all that was going on, I would have left a dish on their table to come back and clear after they had signed the check, and when I did that, I would have pretended to notice the check and been like, “Oh, was everything okay? We brought you your ice cream right away,” and I would have mentioned something too about how we even got them the specific to-go box they wanted, since the lady wanted a different takeout container than what normally goes with the food, which we had initially brought out when they asked for to-go boxes and then had to go return and go get her another one.)

. . .

(After this incident, too, my one [chubby] [Thai] coworker started to reminisce about [South Asian] customers with water problems, where they send water back and say it’s too cold and then they say they want hot water, only when you bring that out to them, then they say it’s too hot, she says she’s had this happen several times, and while she's telling me all of this, she says that she really wants to go to a[n Indian] restaurant and behave there like [Indian] customers do at ours… A few days after that, too, she says that once when it was really raining and she got something from DoorDash, she was thinking of giving extra money to the Dasher when they showed up, but when they did, they were [Indian], so she was like, ehhhh, and didn’t, and when I said that that wasn't good and she should have given them the money, she said that she had already given the standard tip through the app, this was about whether she gave an extra tip.)