A day at my new job:

1) On the bus commute in, a bunch of (South Asian) students are just lollygagging around and blocking the aisle on the bus when people need to move in because so many people are getting on the bus, and it makes me realize how I don’t really see that many (South Asian) customers at my new job at the (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel.

2) During shift, some (50s-ish) (white) ladies are curious about all of our various rooms and so as I do with customers now I offer to show them around, and when I get to the one that you can rent out for receptions, the one asks about capacity, and she mentions that she’s a realtor and heads up a local association and is always looking for professional event venues that can seat up to a hundred and twenty people.

3) After work, I go to the one (campus-area) grocery store that’s on my route home, and as I’m walking with my grocery bags down the sidewalk to get to the bus stop that’s on the route that will get me home, there’s this gaggle of like eight-to-ten (South Asian) students strewn across the sidewalk and crosswalk entrance as they talk to each other and just lollygag around and block everything for everyone in both directions, and it makes me realize again how I don’t really see that many (South Asian) customers at my new job at the (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel

Back-story (2 of 2): A person who was fired.

My one (chubby) (Thai) ex-coworker was telling me about how there’s an infamous restaurant story at the one (Thai) restaurant that I used to work at about the one (older brother) of the one (space cadet-y) (young) (blerd) girl, who had worked at the restaurant before her and who had actually been fired from it.

From what she gathered from our one (tall) (thin) (tech-y) (Thai) coworker/ex-coworker who used to work with him back in the day, he was a strange guy, like one day he didn’t feel like working anymore that day and he was offering people $50 if they would cover for him and let him leave an hour or so early.

And, like one time during a summer not soon before close, these people came in the restaurant and asked where their food was, and it turns out that they had been sitting out at a patio table and he took their order like at 9pm or so right before he was about to leave, only, he never put their order in and then he just left, and so they were waiting out there for like 30 or 40 minutes with no food and no food was coming and no-one else in the restaurant had any idea of what was going on until the people finally came in from the patio to ask what was happening.

The last straw was when the (Thai) owners had (Thai) relatives visiting and they had a big table of them and local friends in at the restaurant, and this (older brother) guy b*tched to the owners that they didn’t leave a tip, even though it was the owners bringing out free food to them etc. and none of the staff were doing anything for them, since it was a like a family-and-friends meal that the owners were putting on for them personally over in one side of the restaurant, apart from the rest of the business.

And, at that, that was too much, and he was fired.

Back-story (1 of 2): The day I quit.

So, like 3-4 weeks after I quit my job of more than 3 years at the one (Thai) restaurant that I used to work at, I went out for lunch with my one (chubby) (Thai) ex-coworker and our one (Chinese from China) coworker/ex-coworker, to get my last paychecks from them as well as my W2 for the year.

(They always leave them in this drawer in the restaurant below the register behind the back counter, only, I wasn’t going to go in there to get them again…  When I had written the [Thai] [husband] owner to say stuff wasn’t working out and I wasn’t coming in that day and to mail me everything and then I deleted the messaging app from work, I didn’t send him my mailing address, and I guess they didn’t have that on file, or my messages deleted when I deleted the app and so they never saw what I had written him.)

And, anyways, they told me what happened after I quit.

My one (older) (Thai) coworker who’s a whiz at the phones had to come in abruptly on a few hours’ notice to cover that Sunday lunch shift, and she was pissed.

And, for the next half-week, the (Thai) (husband) owner kind of disappeared from the restaurant and the (Thai) (wife) owner was the face of everything and running stuff in the kitchen, and you could tell that they were making an effort to be nicer to people, my one (Chinese from China) ex-coworker said, adding that he himself had thought of quitting several times in the like past half year.

And, although I wasn’t aware of it, the one (space cadet-y) (young) (blerd) girl who recently started working there again had just put in her notice, since she was moving away to start art school in spring semester in some other city.

And, although I also wasn’t aware of it, the (oldest) (Thai) daughter was in (Thailand) right then visiting her grandmother, since she had an internship all this past summer and couldn’t travel this past summer when everyone else from her family had gone back there to visit relatives.

So, for like a hot minute, they had a tough time really filling staffing at the restaurant, and the (Thai) owners’ middle daughter who had just begun high school had to come in and start working front-of-house shifts, even though she’s never really done that before, she’s maybe just helped out around the edges like folding silverware and filling water pitchers during like graduation weekend and stuff.

“So, where do you work now?”, my one (Chinese from China) ex-coworker was asking, too.

And, I wouldn’t tell him, or anyone, and I said that it was a contest and whoever finds me first wins a prize.

And, from other stuff I had said, my one (chubby) (Thai) ex-coworker had figured out the part of town I was working in from comments that I had made to her at some point about my bus-ride commute, so I said okay, yes, that was true, and other people could know that as a hint, but otherwise I wasn’t telling them anything, it’s a contest and we live in a small town and we have to create our own fun around here.

Adjustments.

Since my late job makes me sleep in until well past the sun is out, at some point I usually start to wrap the sheet around my head to cover my eyes, while leaving my nose and mouth exposed.

I used to have a sleepmask, but the ties pulled out at the mask-edge and I wasn't able to reattach them in any way that worked, including staples.

You came back to me.

When I went to do laundry last week, my crusty brown washcloth was sitting out to the right of the communal dryer, somewhere by the overflowing lint-bucket.

I had only been using my yellow one for like weeks. 

. . .

(Very oddly enough, the very same day that that one came back to me, the yellow one disappeared in the wash.) 

Odd smell.

Whenever I cook black beans for black beans and rice, I do a quick soak on the dried beans and boil them intensely in salted water for like 30 minutes, and then I let them sit for a few hours before I start cooking them in earnest.

I saw this recommendation years ago online and I’ve been doing it for a while because it works -- if you don't, the beans cook weird and hard -- but lately I’ve noticed that whenever I come back to my apartment when they’ve been intensely boiled and are still sitting, the entire apartment smells like burnt plastic, somehow, like that’s the smell from the beans, as like this subtle addition onto their normal smell.

Like, it just hits you, but if you pause and stop and mentally process the smell, it starts registering just as the normal bean smell, but only after you’ve put some thought into it.

Just very strange.

Outside perspective on my life…

…from an old (linguist) friend who wanted to phone-conference with me about something with the one ancient language that I’ve been studying for the past number of years and have made myself into quite the expert in, when we end up talking relatively late one evening when I’m at the local brewery having beer and reading through this strange ancient body of texts:

“Reading an old text corpus for fun? Sounds great!” – and, he then added that maybe he’s weird, but he really does wish he had more time for that, but his teaching commitments just don't allow for it.