New job personalities…

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

1) A (blonde) (make-upped) (college-age) coworker introduces me to this one (younger) (white) customer who’s a friend of theirs who’s visiting from out-of-town from a town to the south of us, and that friend comments that she’s in the service industry, too, although she works at “a hillbilly country club.”

“You guys should serve moonshine cocktails,” I was like.

“Actually, we do,” she was like.

She also said that she sells a shit-ton of pickleback shots, since she tells everyone that it will help them with their golf-swing.

2) In the early part of the shift before any rush and people are chatting, someone asks me how I’m doing, and I say great because I just filed my taxes, and at that my one (skinny) (bearded and balding) (pun-loving) coworker says that it’s a great feeling to have that off your chest, he just filed multiple years of back taxes since he hadn’t paid his taxes for like five years, and when I raise an eyebrow at that, he vaguely says something about a medical condition and insurance and treatments, although he doesn’t say anything about not being able to manage paperwork, and he's just all very mysterious about it, even though he's the one who mentioned everything first.

Tidbits from my new job…

…at the one (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel:

1) Because we serve ranch dressing with several appetizers, customers comment now and then about how good the ranch dressing is, and I find myself often telling them about how former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos had this like food fountain back at a family wedding in Michigan, only instead of serving like melted chocolate that you could elegantly dip strawberries into, it was filled with ranch dressing.

And, people think that’s awesome, by and large.

2) The POS tablets that we have to carry around are super-weighty and I would find them pulling down my apron halfway through the shift, often at inconvenient times, and I just couldn’t find a way to tie it right now matter how hard I tried, that is until my one (skinny) (bearded and balding) (pun-loving) coworker told me his tip he figured out, just loop it through the back loops on your pants before tying, that makes it more secure, that’s what worked for him before he got these like stretchy black hiking pants for his workpants that have these ginormous side pockets that can actually expand to fit the whole tablet, he said.

3) It's tough when customers order a hamburger and then say at some point later that they want cheese on it, since your first major choice on the menu is to classify something as a hamburger or a cheeseburger, and once they start off as a hamburger but then go the cheese route, you have to go back and delete everything you did and start it anew as a cheeseburger, since if you keep it as a hamburger and add cheese it’s a different, higher price, which is no good.

4) Quite surprisingly, the fried cauliflower has like a buffalo wing flavor somehow mixed into the breading, and so I find myself making sure to ask customers if they’ve had that dish before when they order, and if they haven’t, I let them know that in advance, so there’s no surprises. 

A good deal of the time, too, people end up changing their appetizer order, once they find that out.

5) Sometimes when (white) ladies who drink wine order cabernet sauvignon, I take it to the table and am like, “Who called a cab?”

Two recent cottage problems:

1) The sink in the bathroom backs up, and though I run my finger around the upper inside of the drain to dislodge any gunk, that makes it even worse, where no water will drain through it, even after sitting overnight.

(In the morning I find an old bread-knife that I never use in one of my lesser-used drawers in the kitchen, so I stick it down the drain and twirl it and voila, unclogged.)

(I then put Dawn dish soap all over that mother-effing bread knife, all up and down its blade, and just kind of leave it out in my sink.)

. . . 

2) A cluster of ants have swarmed on something that fell under my kitchen table -- a dropped piece of food? - and gradually I realize that there's ants here and there all around them, and extending all the way to the front door of my little cottage.

(I spray rubbing alcohol over all of them that I see, and I then get a rag and dump a ton of Dawn dish soap over it and wet it and rub everything down, going from the food to the front door.)

(I have to rinse out the rag multiple times since there's so many ant carcasses caught up in it, to the point that I even consider throwing it out, though I don't, I rinse it again and leave it to be laundered.) 

Tree-death.

With that one parasitic tree-of-heaven that was removed from outside my cottage a few years ago, I had been diligently picking up new shoots from its leftover root system, and this year it's clear that they're gone in like half the yard, since presumably the subterranean roots there finally totally died out over the winter.

The stump is also decomposing, now, and mushrooms appear on it in the rain. 

POS.

At the one (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel where I work now, the POS (point-of-service) system on the tablets that we carry around with us is a real POS (piece of shit).

You have no idea how hard it is to move items from one check to another if they’re put on the wrong table or put on the wrong check when there’s a split check at the table… 

Once when a lady was unhappy with her cocktail and we went to delete it, I handed my tablet to a manager for her to punch in her code and take it off the bill, only, one of the beers further down off-screen must have been previously tapped and accidentally highlighted, too, so that also disappeared, and it was only because the customer noticed it at the end of the meal when they were looking at the receipt that we were able to go back and add it back onto the bill where it belonged.

It really makes you wonder what’s going on with software design, where a product isn’t easily usable on such a basic level with such a basic everyday task in the workplace.

An evening at the local music bar:

1) When I went to buy a pack of peanuts – they have those for sale for like fifty cents or a dollar, and I tend to get them when I’m drinking, since not only are they tasty, but they’re a heck of a lot more healthy than like Doritos or Cheetos or whatnot – I ask the (unaffable) (fish-faced) (early 50s) (white) bartender for “a well whiskey on the rocks, no straw, and a peanut,” and he’s like, “Just one?”.

2) Later, the one (large) (bearded) (sound engineer) who I know from around town is over by me, and I ask him to watch my study-stuff while I run to the restroom, and he does, and then later he asks me to watch his drink while he does the same.

“This would be the perfect time to roofie it,” I was like. “We’ve built up trust through the first exchange, and now I take advantage of it, for my own ends.”

And, he laughed, and then was like, “Just like I planned it.”

3) Some (older) (white) guys are also there at the bar – they’re in town from different states since they grew up in the area, and their dad is like in his 90s and needs help right now and their sibling who lives locally can’t handle everything – and when it gets late and a cloudburst happens and I mention to them that I want to go home but the rain is too heavy, the one gestures to this raincoat hanging from a hook underneath the bar between us that had led us initially to start talking since I had asked them if it was theirs or if someone was sitting there, and he’s like, “[My first name], take the raincoat and return it tomorrow.”

A childhood memory…

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

Growing up back at her parents’ restaurant, she discovered that the bar nozzle for sodas had a short lag-time when the pop syrup was coming out but before the carbonated water kicked in, and so she’d tap the button repeatedly whenever she wanted a soda, and it was her just like drinking pure sugar water at eight years old without her parents having any idea that was going on, and she did that shit like all the time.

. . .

(. . .)