Security incident.

On my last trip back from the city that I used to live in, they had just started to board the train and the line was moving forward, when people in uniforms pulled me aside and said that I had been randomly selected for a security check and took out a small stiff strip of paper and wiped it on my backpack and put it in some machine, and then they had me wait there as the one guy with the machine looked at the reading and perked up and then started excitedly showing it to everyone else, before they told me that I would have to wait there some more, and they began to radio for a dog, only to wait a few minutes and radio for the dog again, since it was at the far other end of the station and it wasn't coming, and they needed the dog there to check something out.

"I'm really sorry," I was like, "But will they hold the train for me?"

And, I explained to them that the last train of the night had been cancelled and I had already moved to this one, and there was no other way I could get home that night, and I was scheduled for work the next morning.

"We'll see," the one said, and the conductor was there, and I kind of looked to him, and he looked sympathetic, and I mentioned that I hoped that I could still get a seat facing forward, since I get carsick easily and it's hard on me if I have one of those train seats facing backward for the entire ride home.

And, the one security guy started asking me if I had cosmetics in there, and I said that yes, I did, I had some face cleanser and face cream in my toiletries, and they said that that was probably what it was, there's chemical overlap with military-grade explosives, and they showed me their machine and the readout said something about detecting military-grade explosives, and then they asked me for permission to search my bag, so I gave it to them, and they looked through it, and everything was fine, and then they asked me for my ticket and a form of identification like a driver's license, which I gave to them, specifying that the ticket printout was for the later cancelled train but the QR code for the conductor would link to the rescheduled ticket for the current train, and they wrote all of that information down with great care, and then they set me off to board the train with only five minutes until it left, and I was good.

And, the next day at work at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, I told my coworkers the story, about how my skincare routine cosmetics made the train station police think that I was a terrorist.

"See how good my skincare routine is," I was like. "It makes me a sex bomb!"

And, they all kind of rolled their eyes at that, and I mentioned something again about me being a sex bomb, it's official, they even have a test for that, and the police test said that I'm dangerous, I'm a sex bomb, that's how good my new skincare routine is.

On buckwheat.

Last month at work at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, I asked the (wife) owner with the tired face if I could buy like 6-8 small mushrooms off them for a one-time recipe that I was making -- I just don't cook with mushrooms, I said, and she said yes, I could buy them for two dollars, as she also said that if I ever bought a lot at the supermarket I could use the leftovers to make an omelette, at which I made a face, since that recipe is just unappealing to me, though I do eat mushrooms in things like pizzas that I don't cook at home -- and, anyways, she asked me what the recipe was for, and I said buckwheat, and she didn't know what that was, so I showed her a picture on my phone and she said that it looked like "comfort food" and that buckwheat looks like a grain, and I explained that it's actually a pseudo-grain like quinoa and it only looks like a grain, but it's actually more of a seed, and then she asked me where you get it, and I said that I got mine at the local co-op grocery store.

And, at that, she paused.

Then, "Sounds healthy," she was like. "We just eat rice."

A dream from a few months ago.

A few months ago I dreamnt --

My mother is speaking of travels when she was young, and her trip to the Galapagos, and there is a large map of Central Asia into India but somehow California is where Africa is, and there's multiple small seas in it, and it turns out that she's been to Iran, and she was doing a trip and in one place the doctors wore two-cornered hats, if you can believe that, two-cornered hats, and it's only the map that is there in my mind as she says this, and some of these travels were with her brother, back then, when she was young, but not all of them, and my eyes wander to the southeast to the areas where she had not been to...

And then I wake up.

. . .

(Her brother is my dead uncle.)

Incident on a trip to the mall a few months ago...

...when I was on the bus going home:

A group of like six or seven (black) kids who are all like eight, ten, twelve years old get on the bus at once at the outskirt of the mall area where it's degenerating into randomly-placed minimalls, and suddenly the (black) bus driver is like, "Hey man, don't you try and go by," and he calls out a (younger) boy who tried to get on the bus for free, and he says something that if he needs to use the bus and doesn't have the money, that's okay, just tell him, but don't try to pull something like that and go by, and then he lets him on the bus for free, and then the kids go and sit down, but they kind of walk around the bus some too, and you can see people quietly arrange their bags so they're safe, and then a (slightly older) girl comes up and asks me if she can use my phone to call someone and I say no, and then she goes to the other side of the bus opposite me to ask the same thing of two (younger) (Asian) women and a(n older) (Asian) woman who's separate from them, and they all pretend like they don't speak (English) and just stare straight ahead with on-guard postures and pretend not to pay attention, and then I can hear from the back that the (slightly older) girl is finally on the phone somehow and she says something about letting someone know something and they'll try to be somewhere by some time, and it's like 7pm at this point and the youngest kid is honestly like eight and there's no adults in sight, and then a bit after that we're back at the main station, and the driver gives all of them free transfers, including the (younger) boy who didn't have enough money for the bus in the first place.

. . .

More restaurant tidbits...

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

1) My one (chubby) (Thai) coworker and my one (newer) (taller) (Thai) coworker really do wonder what business and tipping was like there before COVID; supposedly, the restaurant used to be pretty packed many nights of the week, but now a lot of people have shifted to take-out, and have just never returned to in-person dining like they used to.

2) My one (chubby) (Thai) coworker asks me what my favorite color is, and I'm immediately like, "The color of your eyes."

And, she's like, "Whoooooooooooooaaaa," appreciatively.

3) A (recent immigrant?) (slim) (jittery) (highly black) (African?) app delivery driver without much (English) just kind of hovers weirdly when it's time to pick up his order, and he even sits for a while in the prime window area where the customers sit and not at a table in the back, and then he disappears, and then the next thing you know, a man is waiting outside of the (women's) restroom to go in -- everyone is using the (women's) restroom, since the (men's) restroom is closed for some fixture repairs -- and then another table comes in and sits but they leave right away since a man there needs to use the restroom and goes up and sees the line, and he needs to go so bad that they can't wait, so they leave and we lose three customers, and then like five minutes after that, the first man still isn't in the restroom, he's still waiting, and then suddenly the (African?) app delivery driver comes out and grabs his order and hustles out the door, and water with a mild sewage stench is just streaming out from the bathroom door in a thin sheet over the floor, and it's a fairly busy Sunday lunch shift, and the (male) restaurant owner and a (Guatemalan) kitchen worker have to come out and unclog the toilet and mop up all the sewage-water, since it seems that the (African?) app delivery driver was doing something in there, including putting paper towels down the toilet and flushing.

"What the fuck," I was like, to my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker, who was working that shift with me.

And, I pointed out that we had signage about the paper towel thing, and he never asked to use the restroom like a lot of drivers do, and beyond that he took so long in the bathroom that he made us lose that one three-top and about $4 or more in tips each, and then who knows what effect that had on the other tips, to have sewage-water coming out into the center of the restaurant like that, even though we took care of it as quickly as we could and that whole thing maybe only lasted five minutes or so.

And, my coworker reported the driver to the app company, and I said she should block the driver so he never returned, but she wouldn't, she just put the like "Needs improvement" option and marked something about professionalism, which was pretty nice and speaks well of her, I think, though in this rare instance I do think we should have just blocked the guy, you don't need all that stuff like that in your restaurant.

Random restaurant happenings...

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

1) As I finish explaining things table-side one evening on a slow-ish night, a customer just turns to me and looks up at me and states out of nowhere, "You really enjoy your job here."

2) Upon return from the Christmas break when we were closed for a few days, the ornamental gourd that we've had on the front counter since before Thanksgiving has collapsed from internal rot that manifested while we were closed, and the entire ice holder up front under the soda fountain is empty since all of the ice melted away while we were closed, and I'm excited to fill it up and see how many buckets it holds, and it's either five or six, I'm not sure because I lose count as I fill it, I'm so sleepy that morning when I come in after break and am working again and am doing my opening duties again after so many days off.

A new restaurant policy, because of a notorious problem customer.

So, at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, we recently started the policy where if a pick-up order comes in after 9:30pm, we have to take payment over the phone, otherwise we can't accept the order.

Like, the kitchen closes at 9:45pm (an hour earlier on Sundays), and sometimes we're open a bit later if there's multiple late pick-ups or some late tables in the restaurant, but most times, we want to close the door right away and be out of there at like 9:45pm straight, it's just not worth it to hang around for one order or for one table, especially with multiple employees sitting there and twiddling their thumbs and just waiting all that time.

So, anyhow, there's this one (late middle-aged) (scrawny) (weird-eyed) (black) woman who pretty much always orders the same (vegan) dish, and is just a source of chaos, and no tips.

Like, I think there was something happening at some point where she got blacklisted from delivery, since she lives way the heck far away -- I think like a twenty minute drive in one direction, to a far side of town? -- but would never tip on a late last-minute delivery, or ever.

So, anyhow, that night that we worked, she called in her (vegan) order at like 9:30pm, and we reminded her that the doors close at 9:45pm and she said she knew, and she was like, "I'm on my way," and then like we often do with late customers whose take-out is ready, we called her at like 9:42pm to tell her that her food was now ready for pick-up and that doors close at 9:45pm, at which she was like, "I said I know, I'm on my way," and then she didn't show up, so like after 9:50pm, I'm like, "I'm clocking out," and my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones stayed along with a few other people to stay safe in the restaurant until this customer showed up, and I asked her to note when she finally came because I was curious about that, and then, I left.

And, the next shift I worked, I asked, and it turned out to be like after 10:10pm, a full 40 minutes after she placed the order, and they couldn't even cash out the register all that time, since the order went unpaid until finally that customer showed up.

Hence, the new policy.

When we were all talking about that, too, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker was just shaking her head, and she said once during the summer they had already closed up the patio and chained up the patio furniture, and this customer showed up late and wanted to dine in and she wanted to eat outside, so my coworker opened up the patio for her, and, even after doing all that, no tip.

"She is like that," my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker was like.

She also said that like a month or two previously, this customer had showed up during the day to pick up an order and didn't have enough money -- she was something like twenty cents short -- and so my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker told her to go back to her car and look for change there in the cushions or in the cup-holders or wherever, because she needed to pay the full amount for the order in order to get the food, and if she didn't have the full amount of money, she couldn't get the food

"Another customer, it's okay, I pay, it happens," she was like. "But not her. She is not a good customer." 

As she said that, too, she seemed a little proud of herself, that she had stood her ground and made the customer comply, this customer who so often took advantage and abused the trust of so many people who served her. It was like a mark of pride.

"Yes, I saw that," my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones said, nodding and smiling, when my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker related that story.