Restaurant drama…

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

A (white) man with a(n odd) voice calls up and wants to speak with the one (big personality) (redheaded) (Irish-American) owner, and she says that she’s busy, and when I say his name, she gives this exasperated groan and becomes tense, and after they talk on the phone, she writes this guy’s name up on a note that says to double- and triple-check all of his orders before sending them out, because she’s tired of buying him food, and then she sticks that note up on the food-line where everyone who grabs and bags food can see it.

And, the next night, I get this table of two (white) people, and the woman is quite (odd) and wants grapefruit juice to drink, and they order and eat and when I go to get them to-go stuff, I bring all of that back and the bill too and then I take care of the bill, and then they ask for two sauce-cup tops (?), and then well after the bill is closed out, the (odd) (non-descript) (middle-aged) (white) man says that he has a discount card waiting for him somewhere and he’d like to use it on the bill, and I say that I can find a manager to talk to him about the card, but unfortunately he’s already paid the bill and he’d need to provide the gift card before payment.

And, between the giftcard and all of that behavior, I realize that it’s HIM.

And, when I go and check and come back and tell him that a manager out front can help him with the gift card, he goes and waits at a very funny place at the bar, like down at the end, but also where his body is out in the little aisle that goes back behind the bar, where he’s causing problems for people entering and exiting it.

Just someone who is not aware of proper social behavior, at all... Just a very, very strange human being.

I’ve heard that there’s a trend on social media telling you how to order from restaurants and cancel and complain about your order in order to get your food for free, so, like I wonder if he’s a fundamentally unwell person who was inspired to do this, by that? Like, he’s inventing complaints, in order to get refunds, and he’s doing this repeatedly in a relatively small town?

A story of a(n Argentinian) woman.

On a recent trip to (Texas), I popped into the hostel breakfast room for free coffee before heading out to get something to eat and then move onto my tourism for the day -- the room was high-ceilinged with wooden butcher block tables, with a gigantic map on the far back wall with push-pins and photos and foreign currency banknotes all tacked up onto it, and around the edges of the room there was shelving and various kitchen contraptions and a stove and a sink, above which sat multiple humorous signs about doing your dishes -- and anyhow there was also like four people in there when I walked in, although the (bearded) (New Zealand) guy soon left, and the rest kept on talking and laughing as I got my coffee and sat there and caffeinated after introducing myself, but otherwise remaining quiet as I nursed the brew in my little metal thermos-top screw-off mug that's actually more the size of a cup for (Turkish) coffee rather than a full-blown coffee mug.

And anyhow, at one point, the one (chunky) (mid-30s) (white) (Texas) woman with (wild eyes) and a big floppy (Janis Joplin-type) hat and a short (earth-tone) top with hanging fabric that aired out her (mid-size) fat folds and who kept talking about how expensive parking was everywhere in the city we were in just stopped and gestured to the two other people there, this (bearded) (ratty-looking) (early 40s) (Mexican-American) guy in (all-black) and a(n open-necked) (collared shirt) with a (vague) accent, and this (talkative) (blonde) (frosted-hair) (late 40s) (Argentinian) woman who was there for World Cup tourism since it was cheaper to stay in a non-venue city near an airport hub and jet into elsewhere for games, and who was wearing a short (bright blue) top with hanging fabric kind of like the (fat) (crazy) (Texas) woman, only it wasn't to air out any fat of hers, but rather to feature her tight body.

 "I'm just going to say it, you two are so cute together, you should be a couple!", the (fat) (crazy) (Texas) woman was like, kind of moving her head back and forth and throwing up a finger like she was telling us it all, as she sat there, wide-eyed and putting it all out there.

"Oh no!", the (Argentinian) woman was like, pleasantly and vivaciously but also a bit surprised. "He has four children! And, I prefer more white. Mexicans are too dark. I like white."

Then, she paused, and was like, "But, Brazilians and Colombians are also hot."

And, it seemed to me that she meant that last part of "also hot" in the sense that Brazilians and Colombians aren't really always all that white, but their sexiness is usually sufficient to compensate for the darkness of their skin.

Like, she really said that, in front of everyone, just as part of normal everyday conversation with relative strangers at a hostel.

Quite oddly, no-one else seemed to notice, and they all just kept the light-and-fun conversation going from there.

But, like WTF, Argentina. That's no bueno! Just batshit crazy racist behavior, and so blithe.

I guess that's how normalized it is there?

It really makes you wonder if the late Pope Francis achieved sanctity in part from having to put with that shit, for just years. 

Some recent-ish customers…

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

1) A group of four (pretty dark-skinned) (late 20s / early 30s) (Africans from Africa), two (straight) couples each, where this one (short) woman has a very chic short dress on and high heels and a small hand-held purse and she also has this enormously large bottom and she wants to know if they can’t sit in the lounge with the windows (they can’t, it’s late and it was already shut down for the night), while the one man who has sunglasses on and a blue denim coat with broad synthetic sheep-wool collars wants to know if we serve steaks (we don’t).

2) Two (late middle-aged) women come in, one (white) and one (African), and when I go to seat them at a two-top, they ask to sit at a larger table for four – “Of course,” I was like, which is my typical response to customer requests like that, and then I also say that it’s nice to have more room in case they stick their elbows out when they eat their burgers -- and then later the one (African) lady wants hot tea, and when I bring out the tea selection, she chooses English breakfast, at which I pipe up theatrically that it’s dinner time, and then I immediately say no problem, and I bend over the teabag and pretend to cross out the wording on the wrapper and write something else and am like, “English DINNER tea,” to her great amusement.

3) A table of four (older) (white) (townie) folks are quite amused when I return with their beverages and ask them if they need anything else right now, like does anyone wants any “nibblers” (appetizers).

4) A major branded petroleum company is having a dinner for undergraduate STEM majors looking to enter that industry or who have done or who are doing internships with them or whatever, and it’s like 12 people, like 3-4 execs and the rest students.

And, my stomach sinks when the exec picking up the bill is (South Asian from South Asia).

$225 bill - $0 tip.

Like, wtf? No corporate expense account?

I only noticed it when I was cleaning up their table after they were gone, too…  We don’t do autograts for tables, no matter the size, though we used to autograt 6 or more at the (Thai) restaurant that I used to work at.

An endearing malapropism of my mother.

When she asks me about what exactly I’m studying so much with the one foreign language that I’m studying a lot for dual citizenship purposes – I honestly have been studying for more than an hour a day during certain stretches these past number of months – I tell her that it’s not really related to anything that anyone would know and that it also doesn’t have borrowings like from Latin, so almost all of the vocabulary is completely unrecognizable and unpredictable, and so I’m just memorizing thousands and thousands and thousands of new words, otherwise you can barely navigate texts or interactions at all, without that fundamental base of knowledge.

“So you’re really starting from Ground Zero, aren’t you?”, she’s like, trying to understand.

Spring habits (2 of 2): Sleeping.

As I’m getting ready to go to bed, there’s alerts on the radio about severe storms sweeping through the area, and it seems that they will be doing so all night.

So, when I go to bed, I don’t turn on my humming noise machine that I always have on.

Instead, the rain falling on my roof suffices for white noise to help me sleep, but also without that noise machine, I’ll be able to hear any tornado sirens all that much more easily.

Spring habits (1 of 2): Cleaning.

When the temperature first sharply gets warm, the concrete pad on which my cottage rests is still cold, and that difference in temperatures causes huge condensation on the white ceramic tile that is my floor throughout the entirety of my house, and you can see little pools of water by the corner of your bedroom at night, and behind the furniture you can see like how the settled dust there is now almost like a mild little muck, from how it united with the standing water.

So, as part of spring cleaning, I pull back all of the rugs and furniture, and mop everything up with rags wet with water and Dawn dish soap, to clean out the muck and any mold or whatever that might have started to grow there.

. . .

(“I hate that,” my one [younger] [plumpish] [hair streak-dyed] [mid-Southern] coworker is like, when I tell her about the sludge-formation at my apartment, and it turns out that she’s had places where that has happened, too.)

Daylight savings time.

At work at the one (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel that I work at now, I’m passing through “the server alley” and overhear some coworkers chit-chatting as they stand by the ice machine, and they’re talking about adjusting to time switches and how hard it is on their bodies and how much they hate it.

The next day, then, I wake up and it seems super late from the time on my smartphone, and suddenly I realize that daylight savings time had happened overnight, only I wasn’t aware it was happening at all until that moment, and then I realize that the fact of it happening that night must have sparked my coworkers’ conversation on the previous day.