I've had customers ask me if we make the pre-made desserts there.
"Actually not," I'm like, with a small and discreet side-grimace of my mouth,"We get them from a bakery," judiciously finding a word for whatever factory they came out of, since that factory indubitably involves baking at some level and thus I'm not really lying, I don't think, am I?
…at my new job at the (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel, where I now work at:
1) Pretty much all our desserts are premade food-service things that we plate up and maybe dress up a bit, but we don’t really make them there in any real sense of the word, and they’re all in this little side fridge in “the server alley” with saran wrap over them and stickers with freshness dates and bright red "USE FIRST" warnings that we must obey or we have to throw them out.
2) The breaded and deep-fried brussel sprouts have this blue cheese dipping sauce, but they’re also served over greens onto which house vinaigrette is poured, so you can try dipping the fried brussel sprouts in there, too – it’s the better sauce, in my opinion – and plus you get like a free third of a side salad at the bottom of your plate, if you choose to eat it.
The bigger ones also have more interior texture, too, since they probably don’t cook all the way through and get mushy like the smaller ones do, although the breading is always crisp and the taste is always good and so the mushy texture of some is more a neutral fact about the dish than a deal-breaker.
3) For some big birthday party where they had a special cake and leftover slices were later brought back and divvied up among all the workers, the one (quiet) (introverted) (tatted) (white) manager asks me what I think of it, and I say the frosting is amazing but the cake is a bit dry, and then she tells me that the cake was made special in-house – which I did not know – and that the one (short) (perky) (daytime) manager made the frosting, while the one (big personality) (redheaded) (Irish-American) owner made the cake.
“Oh damn,” I was like. “I didn’t realize this was a test.”
At the t-shirt place, I wanted just the classic logo in the color scheme that would look good on me, but even though they had a gazillion shirts, of course they didn’t have that one, the closest they had was the classic logo in the inverse color scheme where the color that would make look like sh*t predominated.
It also isn’t a surprise that I made that mistake with the …MOM t-shirt, because it was one of those days when I was tired… I also stopped by a Target near there to pick some stuff up and use my $25 and $50 giftcards that I had gotten for being part of a follow-up health study to some research study that I had done years ago in college, and even though my purchase was like $40 and I wanted to use up the $25 card first so I could throw it out and then get into the $50 one, somehow I used the $50 card first, and it was too late in the transaction to go back and so there I was, still with two cards and unable to throw one out.
…at the (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel, that I now work at:
1) We’re encouraged to wear gear from the local university if we’re working the night of this big tournament game, and I don’t have it and I don’t feel like running out and getting it, but they win that game and the same thing is set for the next shift overlapping with their next game, and since I’m scheduled again then, I find the time to go get some t-shirts, and I stop by this campus store and there’s a buy-one-get-one-free sale and I go through all of the shirts that are a good color for me only they’re a b*tch to refold if they fall open, so after I find a good one and see how they’re sized and know that large is my size, I look at one more with a cool home-y kind of gingham pattern saying the school’s name and then some small, faint type underneath that with the team name, and it’s only when I get it home and go to start taking tags off that I realize that the far far edge of the small, faint type had been folded in underneath, and the very bottom of the T-shirt design didn’t just say [LONG TEAM NAME]”, but rather “[LONG TEAM NAME] MOM,” like it was a shirt for mothers whose kids go to that school.
And, I tell this story to everyone since I think it’s funny, and the one (big personality) (redheaded) (Irish-American) owner says I should just go ahead and wear it anyways to work, it’s hysterical.
2) Wiping off menus is tough unless the sun is shining in the front window onto the host stand or it’s darker and the lightbulbs hit them just right; otherwise, you can't see where they’re smudged, you need a light coming in at just the right angle to do that.
The campus grocery store that’s kind of on my way home from work that I stop through now a lot for like fresh lettuce and stuff has this strange multi-tiered sale system, where like some are sales for everyone, but others are if you are in their rewards system where you have to punch in your phone number when you go through checkout -- some kind of data-sale thing going on, probably? -- but there's also still others where they're only if you’ve downloaded their app, although I find out that there’s also a touchscreen nearby where you enter the store and you can log in and punch in the deals you want there, if you don’t want to or can’t get the app.
I discover this when I bring up a couple bags of tangerines that were on sale and they ring up as more expensive, but when I go to use the touchscreen, it’s frozen and broken, and although the cashier says they’ve never seen that before, they also say that there’s nothing that they can do for me, and there’s no way that I can get the lower price, then.
…at the one (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel, where I work now:
1) My one (affable) coworker who was in the (military) is talking with the one (bearded) (bleary-eyed) (goateed) bartender with (mental health problems), and they're both commiserating about how the direct deposit program that the restaurant is using is malfunctioning, since paper checks take longer to clear through their “get your cash now” banking app that both of them use.
2) The one (younger) (blonde) (bespectacled) (art school grad) dishwasher tells me how he was in the movie business and felt a recession was coming, so he got out of LA and moved home and then COVID hit, and now he feels all art is local and he bought a big printing press and he’s working as a dishwasher so he can pay that off, although he’s also looking into substitute teaching.
3) The one (young) (taller) (macho) (Guatemalan) cook has a hard time remembering the fight cheer for the local university when everyone is going around saying it because of their getting far in a big tournament, so I try to teach it to him.
4) When a five- or six-top of (younger graduate school age?) (South Asians) come in, I ask them if they’re paying separately or together because if it’s separately we need to keep their tabs in order, and they’re like, “We’ll let you know.”
…at the one (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel, that I now work at:
1) A (late 30s) (brusque but pleasant) (Russian) couple and their (fatter) (kind of nerdy) (female) (American) friend are in, and when I go to the table and the (Russian) guy goes to re-order his beer from me, he makes a remark that he would like “a well-dressed Jesus,” perhaps, riffing off of the “Casual Jesus” name of the beer that the brewery must have given it in one of those shallow sacrilegious gestures that people who think they’re cool often make whenever they’re trying to be cool, and then I respond that there’s also a “Casual John the Baptist,” and when I return with the actual beer, I make a more-elaborate joke that we should really have an expensive John the Baptist cocktail, where it’s served out of a large cup that’s shaped like his head and a woman dances out and gives it to you.
And, their (American) friend was quite amused at this, and I was like, “If you’re going to be sacrilegious, at least go in-depth and be a little more creative.”
At the end of the meal, too, I said that we could serve a Buddha drink, where it’s like $80 and it’s never served and you must remain in a state of perfect indifference to that fact when you start to realize that it will never be served.
2) These (older) (well-dressed) (kind of boozy) customers who I recognize are in with another couple, and when it comes time for last call, they each order one more drink, and then decide to get a second one as well, and they have the drinks lined up on the table in front of them besides their food that they’re finishing.
3) My one (short) (young) (bearded) (vaguely Jewish) (local) coworker with a stud earring in each ear says that he’s only been on a plane once in his life.
He was also in a children’s choir where he grew up, and they once sang in the governor’s mansion.
