More Saint Patrick’s Day…

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

1) For work, my one (eccentric) (blonde) (semi-manger) coworker wears a short black skirt and fishnets over dark emerald green tights.

2) When I go to dress a pan cheesecake for some people, I try to make the chocolate sauce into a clover on top, but you can’t really tell that it’s that, so I make sure to point it out to them when I serve it.

3) When the food starts coming out to a big table in one of the lounges – this table of like 6 or 7 people, with a(n elderly) (white) grandmother next to a “cool” (trans man) who talks of bringing leftovers home for “the boys” (cats?) – the (Irish) specials happen to be up first and I’m sent out with them, so when I deliver them to the appropriate people at the table, I’m like, “Luck of the Irish! You get served first.”

4) This (quiet) (heavyset) (late 50s) (moustachioed) (black) federal employer sits at the end of the bar and wants to know if we have Jameson and Guinness.

Saint Patrick’s Day or thereabouts:

1) I make sure to get like four heads of cabbage to keep in my fridge for soup and for sauerkraut later, since why let a good sale go to waste.

2) At the one (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel where I now work, we have shepherd’s pie and corned beef and cabbage as our specials, and my one (skinny) (balded and bearding) (pun-loving) coworker says the shepherd’s pie is really good because he worked lunch and they had samples out for staff, and we discuss getting one each to-go at the end of the night and splitting them half-and-half so we each get some of each, but the shepherd’s pie sells out really quickly and so I just get corned beef and cabbage for myself to eat at the restaurant, when the night ends.

3) Also at work, a big table of (well-dressed) business-people request the lounge table by the front window, and so I compliment them on how “swanky” they look and I also remind them that they’re advertisements for us and so they should smile widely and rub and pat their bellies when they eat so that anyone going by outside can see that, and that if they do that well enough, they’ll get a 10% discount off their bill.

And, one lady there thinks that’s hilarious, whereas the others seem neutral, or even mildly confused.

4) Also also at work, there’s a state-level high school sports tournament in town, and one group of 40 from the south part of the state that’s in at the restaurant ends up winning their division – I had wished them good luck, saying that they ate with us and so I’d be rooting for them – and also the one (big personality) (redheaded) (Irish-American) owner has to turn down another, even bigger reservation for a hundred people since it’s contingent on a game outcome, and they can let her know by noon whether it will be for that evening or for the next day, but she says that’s just too short notice to get staff and all of the extra food together necessary for such a big group like that, so what can you do, but no.

Some other randoms tidbits…

…of late:

1) One night after work as I’m getting off the bus I thank the bus driver as I always do as I pass by them, and I see it’s a (late middle-aged) (done-up) (Latina) woman, and I recognize her from a local human-interest newspaper story about her and her family’s immigration story from (Latin Amercia), and so I do a double-take and am like, “Are you the celebrity?”, and I add, “From the newspaper?”, and she’s like, “Exactly!”, and she seems a bit happy to be recognized, probably since it’s a late night and it's a repetitive job and it’s something different and fun that happened, to be recognized, when she sits practically all day long every workday (something also mentioned in the newspaper story).

2) My one (middle-aged) (white) (remarried mom) coworker says that her and her boyfriend’s cat is out-of-control, and he’ll not only get outside, but actually go into other people’s houses.

3) Besides the typical homelessness set-up on the front porch of the township building, there’s now a tent pitched alongside the left wall, when you look at it from the street.

New job tidbits…

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

1) When my one (skinny) (balded and bearding) (pun-loving) coworker is mentioning how he didn’t file taxes for like five years straight because of something with medical insurance and repeat care needed for a chronic medical condition – something that I didn’t really understand – I then am like, casually, “So, what do you think about Luigi?”.

And, he immediately lights up and a bit enthusiastically is like, “Man, don’t even get my started, we’ll be here all day!”.

2) At a larger table of like five or six (white) (thirty-somethings), two (fat) (nerded-out) (black-wearing) (FTMs) one of which is (balding) are sitting beside each other, and in between courses they just hold each other’s hands.

. . .

(Two women on testosterone who found each other, but now with odd body hair and probably permanently swollen clitori and possibly long-term heart conditions or whatnot too from being constantly pumped full of those hormones.)

A dream:

The other month I dreamnt –

It’s late evening or even night and I’m in a car being driven by my one (Chinese from China) ex-coworker from the (Thai) restaurant that I used to work at, and we’re passing up the street by the historic hotel where I now work at and a lot of my (new) coworkers are outside on the sidewalk and I turn my head away from them and I try not to look at them as I hope that none of them can see me and that if they do he doesn’t notice or they don’t call out to me or anything like that since the car-window is open, and also because no-one from my old job knows where my new one is at and it's a contest and I don’t want him to find out that way and win, it’s so sloppy of me.

. . .

(. . .)

A third day at my new job…

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

1) As I pass through a lounge, I hear my one (eccentric) (blonde) (semi-manager) coworker begin to explain some aspect of the beerlist to some guests in response to some question that they had asked, and she begins by prefacing everything with the caveat that she doesn’t know a lot about what’s on the list except for the lagers, “because I like beer-flavored beer.”

2) After my one (blonde) (make-upped) (college-age) coworker warns us that her family is coming in, her (heavier) (blonde) mom and her two (blonde) sisters and her mom’s (blonde) friend all come in, and they ask to be seated in her section, with her mom immediately starting to joke that we better have good service here.

So, we’re busy and I’m based in a different section, but as that one closes down and I move out there, I’m clearing a few plates from their table and I can see out of the corner of my eye that my coworker is approaching, so I say to the table loudly and theatrically, “Here, let me get this for you, it seems that your waitress isn’t pre-bussing your dirty plates,” and the mom finds that really funny, but my coworker is a little offput.

Then, later later, I’m going around with water to all of the tables, and I’m at their table and she is approaching again, so I do the same thing and rapidly go to fill up any glass I see, and I make a similar comment about them not getting water, and she just looks at me with the glass I’m filling and is like, “[my first name], that’s Starry” (the renamed, Sprite-like Sierra Mist drink).

“Oh,” I was like, and then I began laughing at myself. “I deserve that!”

3) Throughout the night, they’re setting up the entire restaurant to be set up for a wedding the next day – a Sunday, when the restaurant is typically closed – and as I’m running around helping people, I heard the the one (big personality) (redheaded) (Irish-American) owner talking with a customer about what event they’re doing and how they’re setting up, and after she mentions about the open bar, the customer is saying he wonders how much they’ll drink on a Sunday, and she was immediately like, “Yeah, when they said that, I was thought, ‘That’ll kill the liquor bill!’”, and he kind of made a mug and rolled her eyes a bit, too.

4) As the night is ending, the one (straggly-bearded) (thin) (white) (stoner) cook offers me a full Greek salad, since it’s a mistake since he put onions on it and the customer said no onions.

“Thanks!”, I was like, and I took a leftover blue-cheese dressing that someone had poured and dumped it on there, and I clarified to him that I’d eat it here and finish it before the last dishes from customers were put through (i.e., I wouldn’t leave a dirty plate behind in dish), and if I was getting close and couldn’t finish, I’d pack it up to-go then, but don’t throw it out.

And, he was cool with that, and every once in a while I’d run back and wolf down huge bites as the kitchen cleaned up around me.

And, as I was doing that, I took a too-large bite, and as I bit into a yellow cherry tomato my mouth wasn’t quite closed, and this giant spray of yellow cherry tomato juice and seeds that was inside it sprayed out across the counter there where I was eating, which someone had already wiped down.

5) On the bus ride home, two (white) (STEM) undergraduates behind me are talking about how they have a big bottle of vodka and are debating what to do with it for their party.

“We could get an eighty-nine cent Coke from Circle K,” the one was like, floating the idea of getting a gas station fountain drink in a huge styrofoam cup for the mixer.

Another day at my new job…

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

1) The one (bearded) (bleary-eyed) (goateed) bartender who has said in the past that such-and-such wasn’t good for his mental health gets on me again for using one of two nozzles behind the bar to refill soda water like I was told was okay during training, and he was like, “I thought I told you not to do that!”, very aggressively.

2) A (plump) (perky) (eyeshadowed) (middle-aged) (Latina?) woman is in with her family after she was just there the previous day with a friend, and she’s drinking the same thing and I recommend another drink on the menu and she immediately reminds me that we had briefly talked about this yesterday and she’d like to but she can’t because she’s allergic to pineapple juice, and I say that the one manager who knows the bar program is there and I can ask her about if the drink can be adjusted, so I run out to the one (introverted) (tattooed) (white) manager and ask her what would work, and she said that sub that the customer mentioned would, so I go tell the customer and I also tell her to specify that she has an allergy, and to keep in mind that if the drink just doesn’t work, she should return it and go back to what she knows she likes, that can happen and we checked it out as much as possible and it seems like it would work, but if it doesn’t, it doesn’t, and we do that for people, so she shouldn’t hesitate to send it back if she does end up trying that cocktail mod and doesn’t like it.

Later, then, my one (built) (jacked) (marathon-running) coworker comes out with the bill, and she’s like, “What did you do with this table?!” and she points to a 35% tip.

3) This one (perky) (middle-aged) (round-faced) (Asian-American) customer who I recognize from the one (Thai) restaurant where I used to work at is in with some friends and one of their sons, and she looks at me and asks me where she knows me from, and I tell her, and she’s like, “That’s it!”, and she says that she always gets pad thai woonsen now after I recommended that to her, and I ask her if she gets it spicy because I only eat that spicy because I think it works well with the sugar and the noodle even though I don’t like spicy food, and she says no, she just gets it regular, she never likes spicy food.