Prehistory to quitting (1 of 2): November.

As more prehistory to my quitting, during the cold snap in early winter it was the same weekend early afternoon shift that can be slow, and it was slower than usual with dine-in although there was a lot of takeout orders, and suddenly 3 different tables came in all at once, first one and then like five minutes later 2 others.

And, my coworker was in the back doing takeout -- only one of us can be in the kitchen at once, and at least one person has to be outside -- and I went to help one table, and then the table right next to them that I had checked on a few minutes earlier wanted help right then so I took their orders, too, which actually turned out to involve a lot of special requests etc. that we had to talk through, and then I went to the front to return menus and type both orders in, and then something happened where it turns out that one of the rarer and stupider delivery apps where you have to actively confirm the order by hand had had an order for an expensive dish waiting for like 6 minutes, and the phone rings and it's the (husband) (Thai) restaurant owner and he was mad because he had looked at something and seen the cancellation, and he was mad that I wasn't behind the counter to confirm it and so the customer had cancelled the order.

(For some reason, the order later reappeared and it went through as normal, so who knows what that whole thing was about.)

So, he said sharply in so many words that I was fucking off by the front host stand and I had to explain to him that I was helping customers by typing in orders at the host stand -- "But there were no tables," he was like -- and then I had to explain that we suddenly had 2 tables and it was one of those things where they both needed help at once -- -- but, "Why did you go there and not to the back," he was like -- and, I explained to him that I was returning menus from the customers to the front host stand like we usually do, so I used the computer there --and, he didn't say much, then, but, he still seemed displeased and he said that I should stand at the back more during that particular shift, to help out with takeout orders.

And, that was reasonable, so I said that I would, and I did that from then on, during that particular shift.

Prehistory to quitting (1 of 2): August.

As prehistory to my suddenly quitting, like in August before I went to go visit my parents, I was picking up an exceptional amount of shifts and I worked a huge number of days in a row, including 2 doubles, and including one evening when I was supposed to be off but the (Thai) (husband) restaurant owner wasn't feeling well and they asked me if I could come in and I did that as a favor to everyone, as one more favor before other people started picking up extra because they had to cover for me on my vacation.

And, like 2 days before my vacation I was getting stressed from all that I was working and I didn't feel like being at work again and I was in the middle of all of these arrangements because I was heading out of town for 2 weeks, and the (Thai) (husband) restaurant owner sees me discreetly checking my phone for an email, and he immediately and sharply gets on me for doing that, with no recognition whatsoever of how much I had been working for him during the past week or that just 2 days earlier I had even come in on my day off as a special favor to him personally.

And, that really rubbed me the wrong way, and my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker could see how pissed I was and she tried to calm me down, but I said that I was finished bending over backwards to do favors for them, and from then on I was doing my minimum number of shifts each week, no more working extra for people, that I'd swap shifts around if people wanted me to, but no more extra.

I also started looking around at like 1-2 places for potential jobs to replace or taper off shifts at the (Thai) restaurant because it was starting to feel like I was tired of it because I had been there too long, but soon I got busy with fall conference preparations and everything fell by the wayside, and the lesser amount of shifts each week gave me distance from there and it started working for me better again, to keep working there.

A very sudden and unexpected end to my job...

...at the one (Thai) restaurant where I have been working for more than 3 years, at the one college town that I now live in:

I get in on a Saturday afternoon and when the (husband) (Thai) restaurant owner shows up, it's like his very very occasional behavior that he does to everyone where he doesn't know what's going on and he acts like you're stupid and he says that you need to do something other than what you're doing at the moment or why aren't you doing that etc. -- all very momentary things done very very very occasionally to everyone, that people roll their eyes at -- but it's like he shows up and he's controlling and he wants to show me that I'm not doing my job, with his first interaction being his asking me why I'm not standing behind the counter when my coworker is there behind it and I'm hovering by the edge of it looking to see when customers lay down a credit card so I can take their bill up, and later at the slow part of the shift when there's one table (paid up) and no work and everything is done he sees me briefly and discreetly looking at my phone and he gets on me about that, and like oftentimes happens on that slow weekend afternoon shift when my one (older) (Thai) coworker is done eating her shift meal I go and eat mine from off of the top of the ice machine just inside the door to the kitchen and I have my phone out to look at something and while I stand and eat he passes by and he asks me why I'm doing that and why I'm not outside, and after I clock off at the end of shift and I am standing behind the counter with more Diet Coke in my travel coffee mug and I'm looking at my phone there to check a text message while I'm waiting for someone to get out of the bathroom so I can use it before I go, he passes by and sees that and he asks me to come into the office, and without yelling at me he says that he knows I work mostly with the tables but why am I not helping out more with takeout -- on a shift where everything was done! -- and that I have a problem with my phone and that it looks bad for customers if they look in the window and see me and that he knows that I need to eat but if I'm there and my coworker gets a call and someone walks in the door I won't be there to help them, and looking at your phone while you eat makes you take twice as long, and it's like he's just assuming the worst and not looking into facts and making up all of these hypotheticals to make it so I'm not doing my job, when it was a slightly slower-than-average shift where nothing exceptional happened and everything got done, and at most he saw me look at my phone once during an exceptionally slow period.

Like, made up stuff and just blown-out-of-all-proprotion stuff, and it just took me by such surprise that I just nodded and let it pass by like I would when he did stuff like that in small ways -- and where would you even begin with something like this, where it's like they're vigilant to invent reasons to go after you? -- and after I left I was upset and I talked to my parents and various friends and the (young) (female) (white) bartender with (pussy hat) energy at the local brewery -- "That's toxic," she was like, about his micro-managing counter-standing comment that he began the interactions with, and she said that she would quit that job -- and so I decided to sleep on it, and the next morning I realized that I had tension in my shoulders from thinking of being around the (Thai) (husband) owner, so I sent him a workplace app text that it had stopped working out for me to work at the restaurant and please mail me my last paycheck and my tax documents, and I texted my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker that I wouldn't be coming in to work in 2 hours because I had left, and then I deleted the workplace messaging app, and I immediately felt better, from knowing that I would not have to walk into that restaurant and see him again.

It's like I suddenly reached my limit, and my body was rejecting the idea of the employment there.

I didn't quite realize what had happened at first, but it was like a latent bully suddenly escalated their behavior and I didn't quite see it at first, since it was similar to what had gone before, albeit that it was of such a heightened nature that it caught me off guard and I immediately knew that something was off and that something was different.

And, I mean, I had noticed his behavior early on in my employment there and I had *never* liked it and there was always a certain amount of coolness between us, but I had been able to manage it for a period of multiple years, until suddenly I couldn't.

Just very, very surprising behavior from someone who you've known a bit for a period of over 3 years, but what can you do...  It was his decision to act like that, and as the one (young) (female) (white) bartender with (pussy hat) energy at the local brewery put it, you're an employee, not a punching bag, and I'm not there for him to take his issues out on me by targetting me and playing "gotcha!".

Once someone goes to that level with you, it poisons the relationship and you can't be around them. 

Mysterious apprehension methods for a local postal thief.

Earlier this year like mid-winter, I went to go get my mail and check to see if a small package from my mother came in, and since the package wasn't there yet, again, I called out to my one (West African) mailman who was up the street to see if he had delivered it yet, which he hadn't.

"Okay," I was like, "I had thought it was probably just late, but I wasn't sure, because maybe it was like a package theft off my porch or something."

And, I told him about the recent package thefts at my one (Chinese from China) coworker's building where the guy even had the postal key, and he immediately knew what I was talking about, and he said that they had pictures of him and were sharing them all around.

"And I can't say much," he was like, "But if you see posters for the public, don't believe what they say, but they are investigating this and they know exactly what is happening."

A Great Hunger.

Every once in a while, a great hunger seizes me, to read the one ancient language that I've been studying for quite a while now and have made myself into quite the expert in.

That hit me again just after the turn-of-the-year, and for like days on end I'd live to just pull out this one famous ancient text and a standard translation of it and do an initial read-through without consulting dictionaries, and I'd do that for like an hour or an hour-and-a-half every night, just getting fully and irrevocably absorbed in it until I had tired myself out and mentally could not read anymore.

It's like you forget the world... The best form of escapism. 

An unexpected return.

The biggest result of my counter-top popcorn air-popper?

I am buying locally-grown popcorn again.

For, it pops entirely in the air-popper, in a way that it simply would not when heated on the stovetop in oil.

Christmas revelations:

1) When I was on a quick trip back to the city that I used to live in, I was able to catch up with my one (half Sudanese) (half British) friend and her family, and she was telling me how her kids’ religious education is going, like how she’s exposing them to different religions and holidays and ideas, and how their one (nice) (female) (Kenya-born) (evangelical Christian) babysitter is also permitted to talk to them at an age-appropriate level.

And, a few weeks ago at dinner, her oldest daughter said something about Jesus being dead, and her middle son who’s like 4 or 5 just stopped everything right then and was like, “What, Jesus is dead?!”, and it was just the biggest news in the world to him.

When we went to go play Legos, too, I was looking for ideas about what to build, and his first suggestion was a cross.

2) When I was hanging out catching drinks with the one (nerdy) (worked-out) (Brazilian) (visiting PhD) student, he told me that his participation with (Afro-Brazilian) religions is really recent, and only goes back like this year.

After his partner died in a car-crash, he said, he actually was in another car crash where this motorcycle veered into his lane and his car and the guy flipped off the motorcycle and was hospitalized with severe injuries -- right then I almost wanted to say that it sounded like he was cursed, but something told me not to say that -- and anyhow he was absolutely hysterical and he was so distraught that he could cause other people a death like the one that he had just suffered, that he had even thought about going and killing himself, if the man passed away from his injuries.

And, out of nowhere, without him talking to anyone about this, this girl he knows gives him a call, and she says her uncle had called her and told her that she needed to call him immediately, and this uncle guy who doesn't even know him at all is in a(n Afro-Brazilian) religion, and that’s how everything started, with his friend the guy’s niece even getting into it through him.

We also did a few things over Christmas, too, and at a zoo he was drawn to the wolves howling, and at a museum he was drawn to the medieval armor, since his orisha bears attributes of war.

During various ceremonies, too, he said, he has had various spirits ride him, and some spoke and designated him as their child, although he says there’s a lot of stigma in (Brazil) against this sort of thing, since it’s (black) religion.