More new job happenings…

…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.”

A day at my new job…

…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.

A new habit of my mother:

After she realized that there was one, checking the webcam of the local university, to see what’s happening there on the main quad.

After recent storms, she said there were big puddles, and then the next time she checked, they had disappeared.

. . .

(. . .)

A recent-ish dream:

A number of months ago, I dreamnt –

I’m at a production of the rarely-produced L’Arlesienne, and as the play ends it's night-time and two women advance back up stage left between small buildings raked to make them look larger, as they proceed to the background and talk and then turn to the right to go down the street there, as the music plays.

. . .

(. . .) 

Animals around my house:

1) Across the street at the house of the old (hippie) who passed, with its green siding and green lawn where the bushes were taken out by the new owners, a bright red cardinal flits and sometimes sits, including on this small tree in the front yard that has purple flowers in spring, so it’s this backdrop of green and grey and grey-ish green, and bright purple, and a spot of red.

2) On the front house’s back lawn by my cottage in the late afternoon, in the mid-spring grass that’s getting tall, a fat brown rabbit that’s on the young side, calmly eating and not seeming all too bothered, even as I go to my front door and then stop and watch him.

A sign of increasing local homelessness:

On a late afternoon in early spring when I go to the nearby bus-stop to take it in to go to work, at the edge of the apartment building parking lot just north of there there’s a(n older) (fat) white homeless person laying on a mattress-like mat towards the back of a parking space on the far edge of the lot right by some bushes, with a sleeping bag pulled up around him, in this otherwise residential neighborhood with maybe a few churches here and there but nothing with a shelter or soup kitchen or whatever.

Work tidbits from my new-ish job…

…at the one (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel, that I now work at:

1) My one (white) (young) (gay-ish) (ponytailed) coworker who grew up a town over says that he will never eat at this one major national pizza chain, because in high school he worked in that particular pizza chain back in the town that he grew up in and it was filthy there, and though it’s probably a “there” thing and not representative of the larger chain, it still left such a bad impression on him that he just doesn’t want to eat there anymore.

2) When there’s reception leftovers and I don’t want to overclaim but I also will take anything that’s left over that people truly don’t want, I explain that in so many words, and then my one (eccentric) (blonde) (semi-manger) coworker tells me not to worry, *nothing* like that ever gets thrown out where we work, “because we’re all trash pandas here.”

3) When I go behind the bar for a soda refill very late at night after the standard soda machine is shut down like I was taught to do during training, I go to the one not by where the one (bearded) (bleary-eyed) (goateed) bartender with (mental health problems) is making some cocktail, but then he comes back by there and tells me to get out of his way, although he later apologizes, and he says why didn’t I see the stuff out on the mat there – like some shot glasses laid out and stuff – but I say that I don’t know what’s going on, I’ve never tended bar in my life, maybe that’s end-of-night stuff when they’re breaking everything down, I don't know.