At the one (Irish-y) burger joint on the first floor of a historic hotel where I work now, I walk in and the one (quiet) (introverted) (tatted) (white) manager looks tired, and I ask her how she's doing, and she says good, and then she stops and corrects herself and says a little better because she mentions that my mood always brightens her day.
"And I"m a little out of it," I was like, "But I'm trying!".
Almost during the height of dinner shift, however, in the one elegant-ish front lounge with big windows where I'm working, some customers call over to me, and they point out that there's a drip coming from the ceiling, and I look up and it's like this light intermittent stream of water coming out from between the black lacquered ceiling panels, and luckily right then my one (affable) coworker who was in the (military) is passing through, so I point what's happening and I hand off that issue to him, and I keep hopping around between tables and doing my job even as they hustle out with a bucket and towels and a big yellow plastic "CAUTION" sign that you can set up around stuff, and even as all that is happening a second stream appears, like from the other end of that one same ceiling panel around whose one edge the leak had appeared, like moving down the seam between panels.
And, as one table flees to the bar area and another scooches their table farther away from the leak, this table of two (older) (low-class) (white) patrons, a (fatter) woman and a (messily-bearded) (cross-eyed) guy in a baseball cap who are over towards the other end of the room say they'll stay, since they want to see what happens.
"And we're safe over here," the woman is like.
And, I also overhear the one (quiet) (introverted) (tatted) (white) manager saying something about condensation from the AC and how it can come down like that, but I don't have time to stop and ask since it's so busy.
"Hey, this hotel is definitely an authentic historic hotel!", I tell the customers who moved to the bar, who said that they were glad that they moved, but that they'd "miss me."
I also tell them that that room went from being like the nicest room in the place to being super sad, and like so quick.
When there's lights flashing outside on the street outside the restaurant, too, because some tow-truck is getting ready to take away a stalled car, I point out the lights to people and am like, "Wow, the building managers had to call in an emergency roofer!", and I prank a few people who believe me, before I admit to them that it's just a tow-truck.
So, that room gets closed down, and then towards the end of the night, like 6 (white) people come in and it's a few quiet like high schoolers and a bunch of adults and the adults are a bit loud and the next thing I know a guy pulls a chair from an adjoining table since it turns out that a 7th person will be coming in and joining them, and I check drink orders and pour out all the waters and am bringing them to the table when a (dark-haired) (mid-50s) (white) lady who got a Pepsi tells me she doesn't need a water, although when I had checked earlier she had said that she wanted one, so I put one down for her anyways because I had already poured it and it's not cool when customers are chaotic and switch orders like that, and when I'm by the table the other (vaguely jittery) (older) (white) (blonde) lady is doing something and then she does something and she spills her water and it spills across the table and the person opposite her jumps up, and I'm like, "Don't worry, I'll get a cloth and get that," but they all jump up and start using all of their napkins to wipe up the water but napkins don't get all of it and it leaves a lot of water that you still have to wipe up anyways and so I have to clean that up too and then get their sopping-wet napkins off of the table, and I go and get new napkins and another water and I hand it over, and then after I'm done taking orders, the same lady picks up her menu and whips out her hand to hand it over to me across the table to get it out of her way, and the edge of her menu hits the top of her new water glass and it spills over again, and again they clean up with napkins even though I state clearly to not worry, I'll use a cloth, and I do have to wipe up everything again and clean up their wet napkins again and go get another water and more napkins for them again, and even more than that a lot of water got under the table and I tell the two people standing up there not to sit down since I need to mop up down there or they could slip, and I have to get down on my hands and knees and wipe up under their table, to clean up their mess from that second spilled water.
"How is that table going?", says my one (nose-pierced) (mulleted) (younger) (white) coworker who started working at the restaurant recently.
"I just took their orders but they spilled a water a second time and I'm kind of over them," I was like.
"What do you expect," he was like, "They're an eight-top that came in late."
(They were six and then seven, but point taken.)
When they're eating, too, and I'm kind of over near them sweeping, the one guy who pulled the chair over when they first came in calls out to me like eight-to-ten feet away because they need more napkins and I bring some more over, and it's not clear to me if they actually needed them or not, or if it was just some theoretical need.
Also, this one (fatter) (balding) (kind of squat) white guy at the end of the table makes jokes about the spilling, like when I am asking about prebussing stuff and I ask them if they're done with this little black plastic cup of homemade ranch that's sitting out so that I can clear it, he's like, "Take it, or she'll spill it!", and when I hand out the separate checks he asks if we charged her for the waters, before making some "joke" about how there's a credit card administrative fee on his bill, during all of which I wear a stony and non-responsive face, apart from clarifying that that's a modality issue, and it's removed automatically if the bill is paid in cash.
. . .
(I later learn that the AC system is a problem in the building and they have pans that collect water up there above the ceiling but sometimes they freeze up and then thaw suddenly and send water down through the ceiling, and that when the restaurant first moved in like a year ago, a similar leak happened by the owner's office, only it was sheets of water coming down and they had to put up a garbage tub under it and keep someone there all night to keep emptying it until they could fix it the next day, and my one [quiet] [introverted] [tatted] [white] manager says that she has videos of it on her phone somewhere and that she'll show it to me, just remind her.)
