...at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now:
1) A (very fat) (bearded) (late 30s?) (white) man in a dirty heavy green coat and with multiple bags sits at the far end of the patio right after we open up for dinner, probably so he's just out of eyesight as he rests and smokes and drinks his plastic bottle of pink lemonade, and he keeps being there even as a few tables come inside and sit by the bit front window, and I want to go say something to him because it must be really unpleasant to be eating at a restaurant and have a homeless person sitting like six feet away from you on the other side of a glass window where you can see him.
But, my one (newer) (taller) (Thai) coworker and my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones say don't, just let him sit and he'll leave by himself, which I pretty much agree with because he's a bigger guy and doesn't look normal, and while we're discussing this, we see someone outside walk over to him and give a dollar.
And, after a while he leaves, so I go straighten out the chair outside, and I have to pick up the empty pink lemonade bottle that he had just left out on the table as trash, without seeking to dispose of it at all.
But, it's like fifteen or twenty minutes after that, and, what do you know, he's back.
And, just as we're talking about it, one of our customers who had finished up walks outside, and we can see him walking over to him and giving him a dollar.
"Another dollar!", says my one (newer) (taller) (Thai) coworker. "Now he will never leave!".
And, at that, I just grimace and shake my head, and am like, "And he's just sitting there doing nothing, we walk back and forth all night helping tables, and some of them give us less money than that."
Later, too, it begins raining a little, and he actually takes the chair and moves it down the sidewalk further, under the awning of a business next door....
After that, I especially keep my eye on him -- he was so fat, I didn't think he'd actually steal the chair, especially since he was carrying so many personal belongings with him that he'd also have to carry, but, you never know -- and then, finally finally, he gets up and leaves, and so when I have time after that, I go outside to pick up the chair and put it back.
And, what do you know, but there was another empty lemonade bottle set up on a window-ledge by where he was sitting, he just left that trash out, again, and plus, I go to pick up the chair, and I see the one heavy metal leg of it is actually bent, he was so fat, to the point where I have to pick up the chair and flip it over and put my foot down on the bottom of the seat and throw my weight into bending the leg back into a more-standard chair-leg position.
"He bent the chair leg!", I tell my coworkers, going inside afterwards. "He was that fat!"
2) A (mid- to late 40s) (white) man comes in with a(n 80 year-old?) (dad-looking) (white) man with a cane who looks frail and sprawls out on the chair and seems to have a hard time keeping track of things, when they order.
And, he throws his baseball cap on an adjoining table, and although he seems infirm and perhaps even losing it a little, part of me says that you'd never see that behavior at a (non-Asian) (American) restaurant like a local diner, where someone just takes over an adjoining table...
People really do have this sense of freedom and entitlement in a(n Asian) restaurant, that they wouldn't have in other places.
3) This (mid-50s) (professional) (Indian) mother and her (Indian-American) daughter are in -- I recognize them, because they add in onions to the pad see you -- and this time they decide to try a mock duck curry.
"What is mock duck?", the mom is like. "Tofu?"
"No," I'm like, "It's gluten."
"So it's tofu?", she's like.
"No," I'm like.' "It's vegetarian, and it's fried and crispy like tofu and it's a major part of the dish like tofu, but it's not from soybeans, it's gluten."
"So it's tofu?", she's like.
"No," I'm like, "It's not soybeans, it's gluten."
"Oh, it's gluten," she is like, surprised and thoughtfully, realizing for the first time that it's gluten.
Later, too, they need chili sauce and then they need salt, and then she calls me over about the curry.
"There is not enough sauce here," she's like, pointing at the normally-portioned curry. "There's too many vegetables, and not enough sauce, it needs this much more sauce," and she cups her hands together to where it's around the size of half of a soup-cup. "Can we have more sauce?".
"I'm very sorry, ma'am," I was like, "But they make the sauce fresh for every order of curry, and it's combined from several different ingredients and cooked together, they can't go and make more sauce now," and, like I always do when I get this request with curries or several stir-fries, I explain that we can make it with more sauce, but the cooks needs to know that ahead of time, so the next time they order curry, they can request that from the beginning, and the cooks can make more sauce then.
And, she just keeps looking at me, and is like, "Can we have more sauce?'.
So, I repeat myself apologetically, and I say that that's the normal portions in the dish in terms of sauce to vegetables, so they'll know that for the future if they ever order curry again and at that point they can ask for more sauce if that's the way that they like it, but it's made from different ingredients, and it's not a sauce that we can go back to the kitchen and get more sauce right away for them.
"Can they cook it?", she's like, and I have to say no, but I say that I can go check on the sauce ingredients, and maybe there's something that I can bring them, and so I go back and talk and I get the major portion of the curry sauce, but it's not mixed with the coconut milk and cooked all together or anything like that, and I bring it out to them, and I explain what it is.
"But this won't taste the same," she's like, and I say that that's what's possible now, and in the future, if they want more sauce, they can order that way from the beginning.
(This does come up with customers occasionally, and people always understand... Like, I remember one [early 50s] [white] guy who was done with his stirfry but had a bit of leftovers and wanted more sauce for his mongolian beef to take home, and I had to explain that we could bring out hoisin sauce, but it wouldn't be the same since it was wasn't cooked together with the beef and its juice and some other stuff in the wok, and the guy understood, and then he said it was okay, then, he'd order more sauce next time, and that was that.)
Anyhow, I stayed away from that table the rest of the night and asked my one (newer) (taller) (Thai) coworker to deal with them -- from the corner of my eye, I could see that they hardly touched the small bowl of the major curry sauce ingredient -- and, anyways, they ended up rounding up a $52 and change bill to $55, leaving an overall tip of like two and a half dollars.
"You just never know with tables like that," I was like, shaking my head over how they wanted a small kitchen to stop everything and cook from scratch a very small portion of sauce. "They can be the most demanding in the world, and they leave the least. You wonder if it would be different if you did what they wanted."
And, right away, my one (newer) (taller) (Thai) coworker broke in and firmly was like, "No. You don't encourage them."
And, I shook my head some more, and said that what they have said in the past is really true, there's a certain type of (South Asian from South Asia) customer where it's like the caste system and they treat you more like a household servant, than a regular restaurant waiter.
It really just did feel throughout this interaction that this woman was the lady of the house, commanding a kitchen and finding fault and having things remade, to swing her dick around for whoever might be watching.
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