Inquiry into the local healthcare staffing situation.

The other week at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, two (younger) (white) women in scrubs were in for lunch, so I chit-chatted with them a bit, and it turns out that they were on lunchbreak from the nearby major hospital system.

And, I asked them if they were still having short-staffing with CNAs, and I mentioned how several years ago someone from there told me that it was so bad, that they were having to substitute in LPNs for CNA work.

And, they didn't know.

"We do more clinical stuff," the one was like, "So we really don't see that."

Two economic musings:

1) What with the discussion of home prices starting to make its way into presidential campaign talk, I was thinking back to a number of friends around my age who've gotten recently screwed or have just gotten by by the skin of their teeth, with home ownership.

Like, they had a post-pandemic divorce and were forced to split with their spouse and look for a home but prices have now forced them to rent instead -- though, admittedly, one of those people did find an affordable house, because someone had committed suicide in it -- or, like how someone I know picked up stakes and sold their house and moved to North Carolina and then when that area didn't work out professionally like they had thought they moved back to my homestate, only for them to find out that the general rise in housing prices combined with AirBNB tourist area buy-ups had excluded them from the very market where they'd just owned before!

It really is something, to know like 3-5 people like this, just from my narrow social circle.

2) Overall, it's astonishing to me how it's been "always something" generationally, where it's just blow after blow after blow that you can't foresee economically, like (in roughly chronological order):

- the brewing student debt millstone;

- the 2008-9 economic crisis;

- the internet really coming into its prime and hastening deprofessionalization and precarious work;

- the internet really coming into its prime and increasing the amount of job applications and the intensity with which you have to detail them, including to circumvent resume-screening software;

- wage compression;

- lost years to the chaos of the pandemic; and

- rise in housing prices.

Conversely, there are some bright spots, like the Affordable Care Act, and the current strong market and higher wage floor for everyday jobs, currently.

Overall, though, you really do look back, and it's been like 15 years-ish of the ground shifting beneath your feet in ways that are very hard to anticipate and that are hard to cumulatively compensate for, if you've experienced multiple setbacks.  Like, one or maybe two would be doable, but multiple multiple ones?

I really do feel like the vibes are shifting and the way to go nowadays for a certain type of person who's had a certain type of trajectory is to "check out" and just not deal with the bullsh*t anymore.

Too much lost time and too little to gain with any decent chance of certainty -- why bother putting the effort in?

There's more to life than sinking ungodly amounts of time and energy into the mere hope of indefinite rewards.

Weakening of Linguistic Strengthening.

This whole new linguistic trend of saying "I appreciate you" to convey true thanks vs. the rote "thank you" seems to be spreading a little bit more but also conventionalizing and weakening.

Like, the other weak this (big) (bulky) (body-building) (Arab-American) (medical resident?) customer got a crap-ton of takeout (his daily calories and protein?), and he made sure to say "I appreciate you," but when I went to go cash him out and file the receipt, the bill was like sixty dollars, and the tip was zero.

Unless he's one of those mentalities where they think profuse words substitute for cold hard cash!

You do see that type, sometimes.

Addendum addendum.

It's interesting how on the whole (Chinese from China) students are a lot more conscientious with tipping.

Like, you get a few stinkers, but otherwise you see a lot of people trying to "do it right," even after they've just arrived into the country for school and it's clear they don't quote know how the system works.

Like, I've seen a (Chinese from China) customer go to pay the bill and give their credit card and they ask me to put on a 15% tip, since they don't know that they get the receipt back and they write it on that and the amount is then adjusted later to account for the tip -- something very endearing, since they want to do right, but just aren't oriented yet!

Similarly, I see a lot of tips that are **exactly** 15% to the penny -- stuff like $2.43 -- whereas a customer from a tipping culture might round up a little, to make it a flat $2.50 or to make the bill amount plus the tip make a round number in total.

My one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones was also reminiscing about a (female) (foreign) (East Asian) (presumably Chinese from China) (presumably student) customer who didn't realize the payment system and brought the bill up to the counter to pay rather than leave it on the table, and she had to explain everything to her, including the area for tip, and the customer was like, "Thank you, I don't know, I will take this and ask my American friend," and she took the bill and went back to the table and figured everything out with her friend.

"Someone has taught them," my one (newer) (taller) (Thai) coworker was like, when we were discussing these differences, between the (Chinese from China) and (foreign) (South Asian) (student) customers.

Addendum.

At the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, my one (taller) (new) (Thai) coworker and I were talking about common behavior from (South Asian) customers, and she told me that her mom faces the same stuff all the time, at the (Thai) restaurant where she works that's closer to campus.

That restaurant is counter-service and the customer places their order and pays and then waits for it to be cooked up and then they take it to a table and eat it there or take it away, but a lot of times her mom starts cooking, and then a (South Asian) customer tries to change the order.

"NO, I CANNOT CHANGE YOUR ORDER," her mom runs out from the back of the kitchen and says, when that happens.

"Her boss lets her do that," my one (taller) (new) (Thai) coworker was like.

I pushed for more details -- with these requests, did they try to change ingredients, or switch entire dishes, like from a fried rice to pad see you? would the requested change change the amount that they had to pay, like where they were expecting you to negate or adjust the payment they'd already made? -- but she didn't know the specifics.

But, I want to find out!

My mother stereotypes.

For the first time ever in my life (I think?), my mother just laid out a broad-based black-and-white stereotype:

"Indians are rude," she was like, after she had asked me on the phone about how my previous shift at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now had gone, and I had said that there had been some weird customers, and then I explained the thing about how a lot of (South Asian) customers cause chaos and try to change orders etc. after they place them, which I now counter by doing what they request if possible, but then gently being like "Mistakes happen, but we appreciate it if your final order is your final order, to minimize mistakes in the kitchen if we have to talk to the cooks and interrupt their work..."

(I'd never gone into detail like that with her before, about all of the happenings with [South Asian] customers.)

(Additionally, the logic of the strategy is like correcting odd freshman behavior, back when I was a writing instructor; you not only point out correct behavior, but you also assume that they're acting out of lack of information and so you try to explain the full environment and expectations and how things work, though I suppose that works better when you're an authority figure with salary coming from elsewhere, versus a subordinate dependent on good-will and tips.)

As it turns out, when she used to work as a "stewardess" (not "flight attendant") back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, my mom had some customers like that, and that stereotype was a by-word among that profession, to the point where she still thinks it fifty years later (!).

She was also saying that my godmother's (dead) husband had worked in customer service for the airlines for a while, and it was infamous to get a (South Asian) customer on the phone with a complaint, since there would always just be this repeated line about "Compensation, compensation!" and "I need compensation!".

New neighbor doings:

The (new) (front upstairs) (college age) (Indian-American) and (white) (dating-each-other?) neighbors have put a new doormat out that's shaped like a small cluster of cherries, so many nights when I get off work and go up to the front house to check the mail before I go in for the night, I walk up the front steps, and in the shadows it looks like a depiction of two big dangling testicles, just sitting there on the front porch.