Another weekend shift at work...

...at the one (Irish-y) burger joint on the first floor of a historic hotel, where I now work:

1) There's a huge catering order going out the door for after the football game, and the one reception room has tables set up with like hundreds of plastic boxes open and set up with silverware and fruit salad cups and homemade potato chips in them, and empty buns as well, which we have to fill with sandwiches.

So, as the carts of hot hamburger patties and just-cooked chicken breasts come out, the one (balded) (bearded) (hipster) husband of a waitress stands there with a spatula and picks up each burger or chicken breast and holds it up and meanwhile I've picked up an empty bun in my bright deep blue sanitary-gloved hands and I cup the meat with it and then whip back around and throw it into the box and get the next bun and we repeat, like an assembly line.

"We got some Henry Ford going here," I was like, "Except for the anti-semitism."

The guy's (overweight) (young) son is there, too, and he says that the (redheaded) (big personality) owner is "the coolest," since she has a restaurant named after her. 

2) This (fatter) (triple-chinned) (Asian-American) mom who's well-dressed but with an unfashionable haircut and a (nerdy) (kind of ugly) (white) dad who's well-dressed with an unfashionable haircut are there with their (hot) (college-age) (HAPA) son, and as I pass the table, I hear the mom ask, "But can't someone at your frat buy liquor for you?"

3) My one (young) (white) (Southern-ish) (gay-ish) coworker with the (80s style) is like, "So, I heard you had an eventful night," and then he says something about how a table wanted drycleaning from the ranch that I had spilled all over this guys sleeve and back, and I'm like "What?!", since that was the first I'd heard of it, and then he said that the table said I had spilled it when I was prebussing, and there was that table where when I had gone back to get more there were small spots of ranch on the floor as you went away from the table, but I had noticed nothing at the time or when disassembling the dishes back in the dish area, and besides I hadn't cleared over them and they hadn't said anything at the time, so, maybe it was them trying to get money out of the restaurant, or maybe I did do it, who knows, but you think someone would have seen something at the time if it was something that I really did do.

4) During the height of dinner hour the one (straggly-bearded) (thin) (white) (stoner) cook sees me talking to a (trainee) cook about something, and he snaps loudly and is like, "Hey, don't call out to anyone in the line! something something something, and I'm like, "Hey, I didn't, [a waitress's name] asked me to relay something and I stood here until someone was free and approached me," and it was this whole pissy bitchy thing, but then at the end of the night he comes up to me and apologizes and he starts using all of these therapy words and he says that it's something that he's trying to work on and he doesn't mean it and it's not him it's the situation and I was right in what I did and he was sorry etc. etc. etc., and I find it awkward, and so I thank him and say that's very nice of him, and I disengage from the situation and go to do something else.

5) As I come back into a room a second time to do something and I realize that I'm abnormally forgetting a lot of stuff, I go back out to the register, and as I'm fiddling there with the POS interface for what I need, I glance at the time, and I suddenly realize that it's like 9:45pm at night, and not like eight-thirty like I had been thinking, and that was probably why I was getting so forgetful, it had been a long and busy night and I was getting tired. 

6) As I bus home that night, a drunk (young) (Latino) guy on the seat next to me starts falling asleep and his head actually flops over on my shoulder, and some (young) (dressed-up) (female) (black) students see that and one calls out and is like, "Hey, hey, did you miss your stop?", and when he wakes up with a start, they check on him and ask him if he has a friend with him and if he knows how to get home, like they're looking after him and stuff, but he seems started awake and sober enough and so he just gets off the bus by himself and walking back a few blocks, and none of them go out with him to assist him, they had apparently done enough good deeds for the night.

A weekend shift at work...

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

1) When a lot of out-of-town people were through the restaurant for a local university function and then separately a wedding, I was chit-chatting quite a bit with a number of tables, like cluing them into local bars and businesses and things to see and even getting some people set up to use the (very convenient!) local bus system for a trip that they had to take into the heart of campus.

And, like happens occasionally, people ask me if I'm local, like I grew up there, which of course I did not.

(It's like people visit a small town set in the country, and want authentic help who are "tied to the land.") 

"But you know so much," the one (wine-drinking) (California) (white) lady was like.

"That's because I talk incessantly," I was like. "You learn a lot from people that way."

2) A gigantic table of (fuckable) bros of all ages come in, all muscles and bellies and beards and logoed team gear, and they get seated at a gigantic table in back, where they drink and are loud for just hours.

And, when I help out here and there with it, I call it "the bro table," and then "the brable" and finally "the branquet."

And, it turns out that they are just the loveliest people, like, when I was prebussing and I cleared a small plate from in front of someone, they paused their conversation to say thanks in just a really nice and heartfelt way.

"They really are just the loveliest people," my one (balding) (bearded) (pun-loving) (white) coworker was like. "Way to break stereotypes." 

3) A (white) (New Jersey) mom and sister were in town, and it came out that their son/brother was a freshman on the football team, which I later related to coworkers.

"Ours or theirs?", asked the one (young) (white) (Southern-ish) (gay-ish) coworker with (80s style).

"Ooh, good question," I was like, and then I had to think back to how they'd said that they'd be visiting town again, so it must be our team.

4) A (southwestern) pasta salad was a mistake and up for grabs, but I was busy, and like 30-40 minutes later I asked after it, and, it had been thrown out.

5) The one (short) (older) (Latina) hostess and the one (introverted) (tattooed) (white) manager are drinking at the restaurant bar after work, and all of a sudden they're looking at me, and then they volunteer that they were just talking about how I always clean the front doors and other glass before the start of weekend shifts so everything looks nice.

"It's such a nice restaurant," I'm like, "But if you walk in and there's a handprint from grease and blue cheese sauce on the door, it's just gross."

Then, I added that the little things add up. 

6) Towards the end of the night, I stopped by a table to check on them, and the (polite) (elegant) (mid-50s) (white) lady thanked me but said that "a gentleman" had already just helped her, and then my one (short) (young) (bearded) (vaguely Jewish) coworker showed up with something for their table that they had asked for.

"Oh, him!", I was like. "You had said 'gentleman' and I couldn't figure out for the life of me who you meant." 

Yard surprise.

After chopping up old tax documents with my social security number on them, I take out all my recycling to put it in the bin by the side of the house, and as soon as I open up the top to the recycling bin, I hear this skittering. clambering sound like something trying to climb on plastic, and then out of the trash bin next to it with a gnawed-off corner on its top there pops up through it the head of a squirrel, who then leaps outward and down to the ground to run away, since I had scared it when it was getting into the trash, apparently.

A story of Gen Z.

This (later middle-aged) (fat) (somewhat theatrical) (white) lesbian who does door at the new gay bar in town says that they've had a hard time figuring out which events will work and why or why not, and beyond that, even when Gen Z does show up, they like stand around and don't buy drinks.

"Uh, I'm glad you showed up," she was like, "But this is a bar, hon." 

Healthcare sliminess.

For some routine checkups that I have done yearly I had accidentally skipped a year and I started again this year like 3-4 months ago, but this time the billing seemed off, including a set of late bills that came in that insurance didn't chip in for that amounted to like $700.

So, I looked up the codes and it seemed right away like duplicate billing at least for the staff -- AMA guidelines say that you only bill out a second subordinate staffer like a nurse for their time if they spend a lot of time going over something different than the main subject of the appointment with the doctor, which was not the case at my appointment -- and my hunch was that the test was billed out twice, too, maybe from a different department.

And, I eventually got them to send me old copies of my bills from former appointments, too, only to find that at those 2 previous appointments there was 1 billing code for each thing, as opposed to the 2 per thing this time.

But, when I contacted the hospital, they were soooo slimy, pushing me to do stuff over the phone instead of email (no), saying that they never do fraudulent billing and that they did a "review" and the other bills were for like "facilities" (I think), later they said they did another review (again?) and the billing was for something like "different aspects of the same care" (you mean duplicate billing, I think?), and all the while they couldn't give me a straight answer for what the billing was actually for...  Just a scam, and I had to lay out for them twice that my options include contacting the insurer about potential health insurance fraud, as well as the state attorney general. I also had to tell them that it was astonishing that we had exchanged so many emails and they couldn't answer a simple question about what the bills were for, so the billing simply did not appear to be legitimate...  

The last I had heard they had said something about physically mailing me some result of some review, but when I responded to that email with a strongly worded email saying something like that their claims of "review" had appeared false so far and all the reasons that they had provided so far were generalities that made no sense and explained nothing and so the billing did not appear to be legitimate according to the evidence that I had provided, I got a notice in my email a few days later saying I had yet another message in my hospital messaging account from them. But, I didn't check it right away because I was busy and because this is all just so draining, and instead I decided that I'd look at it when something finally showed up in the mail (it didn't - I'm still waiting).

So, maybe they cancelled out the bills and never mailed me what they said they'd mail me, or maybe I misremembered what they said they'd do?

This is just such a timesuck, it's like they're trying to wear you down and make you accept the legitimacy of the billing and pay it to get rid of it instead of spending the time and energy and mental space fighting it.

Just such a scam, and so slimy.

It's finally on my to-do list to go open that message they sent me, and to see whatever they said.

I really hope that I don't have to write the state attorney general. 

I would also add that I don't remember companies doing stuff like this, years ago, but now I've run into billing and fraudulent stuff everywhere -- the hospital, an interstate bus service that I used, a rental car company...

It's like all of them are hostile rackets that are out to get you, instead of businesses operating in reasonably good faith that occasionally make mistakes sometimes, as happens in life.

A life-changing discovery:

You can refrigerate avocados.

HOA.

Like a month ago at work at the one (Irish-y) burger joint on the first floor of a historic hotel that I now work at, we had a reservation for a rather large group of up to 35 people that turned out to be a home owner's association.

And, when I found out what it was before any of them arrived, I started just going off on HOAs.

"If you want big tips," I was like, "Just talk to the other servers about how much you hate property taxes, so they can overhear you. There's nothing home owners love more than b*tching about property taxes."

And, I put on a home owner's voice and was like, "This governor, all he does is tax tax tax tax tax. Now cutting your taxes, *that* would be a change, but does he try something different? No."

And, "Now I support a new school as much as anyone, but we just had a mileage!"

And, I then moved out into other areas, like, "And did you see what they want to do with that nice cornfield at the edge of the subdivision? They want to put in solar! Think of the glare, and the dust. And they say it's only for twenty or thirty years, but once you put that in, it will be there forever."

- and -

"And these pronouns, whatever happened to just being a tomboy?".

And, after the one (white) (young) (gay-ish) (ponytailed) coworker says he doesn't like home owner's associations and I ask him why and he holds out his arm and he points to his skin -- he's like a quarter black, I found out recently -- I was like, "Maybe, but don't overthink it, you could be southern Italian."

And, I was then like, "And these new neighbors, with their family reunions! Imagine if they went late."

And, he joined in and was like, "They're so urban."

And, in my most popular bit of all, I referenced the banned-a-while-ago (Native American) mascot from the local university, and I was like, "And [the mascot name], we're not making fun of Native Americans, we're *honoring* them."

Then, as the (rather old) (white) people began to trickle in and the first arrivals of the organizers began going around to all of the tables and setting up party favors and little mugs with candy in them, some of those mugs not only had on them the logo of the local university in town, but also a picture of the old, banned-a-while-ago (Native American) mascot.

And, as soon as I saw that, I ran out front to go tell all of my coworkers.

"I called it!", I was like.

"You did," they were like.