…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.
