An example of historically unpleasant behavior...

...by the (husband) (Thai) owner of the one (Thai) restaurant where I used to work at:

It's a busy shift and I'm coming back with dishes and putting them in the dish-tubs and the bell rings for food, and I go to wash my hands because they're filthy before I pick up the food, and the (husband) (Thai) owner is there and asks why I didn't come right away when the bell rang, when the bell rings you come pick up the food, and I say that I had to wash my hands first, and then he says why did I have dishes anyways when I needed to pick up food, and I say that I already was in the middle of bussing them when the bell rang...

. . . 

(Just stuff like that...  When I told that to the one (older) (white) (female) (townie) bartender at the local brewery, she got this displeased look on her face and is like, "He was talking to you like a child," and I said yes, but it was only every few months or so in very very short interactions where you didn't even need to respond most of the time, you just nodded and went along with what you were doing...  Sometimes, I added, he didn't even make any sense, like once when I was working on a two-person lunch shift and we were absolutely slammed, he said that to manage tables we had to divide them so one person helped one table and the other person helped another, which made absolutely no f*cking sense and would actually have been more inefficient than what we were doing, the problem is that there was such a glut of people that 2 servers couldn't handle it all at once, sometimes restaurants are like that...)

Addendum addendum.

Like earlier last year, the (husband) (Thai) restaurant owner said something in the back to my one (Chinese from China) ex-coworker, and he was upset afterwards, and you could see tears actually forming at the edges of his eyes, he was so angry and so distraught from what the boss had said to him.

And, I didn't get into it with him, but I said that the boss was sometimes like that and that I just let it roll off my back, etc., but multiple people were **shocked** when I told them that story, when I was considering quitting and ultimately did quit.

It was just that abnormal to them, where I had been normalized into accepting and excusing that behavior from an employer, although perhaps in that particular case it was in part due to my not observing the actual interaction between them and not knowing exactly what went on, although that said, there's no reason anyone should come away feeling like that after an interaction with someone. 

Addendum.

With people who are bullies, you should never engage them on the level of the content, because what they think and do is ultimately only very loosely if at all connected to what you do, and they'll invent and distort reality to fit and justify their chosen behavior.

But, as I have always told other co-workers, if all of us were that stupid like the (husband) (Thai) restaurant owner assumed during his occasional corrections of our behavior, that restaurant would never be able to function, at all. 

Prehistory to quitting (1 of 2): November.

As more prehistory to my quitting, during the cold snap in early winter it was the same weekend early afternoon shift that can be slow, and it was slower than usual with dine-in although there was a lot of takeout orders, and suddenly 3 different tables came in all at once, first one and then like five minutes later 2 others.

And, my coworker was in the back doing takeout -- only one of us can be in the kitchen at once, and at least one person has to be outside -- and I went to help one table, and then the table right next to them that I had checked on a few minutes earlier wanted help right then so I took their orders, too, which actually turned out to involve a lot of special requests etc. that we had to talk through, and then I went to the front to return menus and type both orders in, and then something happened where it turns out that one of the rarer and stupider delivery apps where you have to actively confirm the order by hand had had an order for an expensive dish waiting for like 6 minutes, and the phone rings and it's the (husband) (Thai) restaurant owner and he was mad because he had looked at something and seen the cancellation, and he was mad that I wasn't behind the counter to confirm it and so the customer had cancelled the order.

(For some reason, the order later reappeared and it went through as normal, so who knows what that whole thing was about.)

So, he said sharply in so many words that I was fucking off by the front host stand and I had to explain to him that I was helping customers by typing in orders at the host stand -- "But there were no tables," he was like -- and then I had to explain that we suddenly had 2 tables and it was one of those things where they both needed help at once -- -- but, "Why did you go there and not to the back," he was like -- and, I explained to him that I was returning menus from the customers to the front host stand like we usually do, so I used the computer there --and, he didn't say much, then, but, he still seemed displeased and he said that I should stand at the back more during that particular shift, to help out with takeout orders.

And, that was reasonable, so I said that I would, and I did that from then on, during that particular shift.

Prehistory to quitting (1 of 2): August.

As prehistory to my suddenly quitting, like in August before I went to go visit my parents, I was picking up an exceptional amount of shifts and I worked a huge number of days in a row, including 2 doubles, and including one evening when I was supposed to be off but the (Thai) (husband) restaurant owner wasn't feeling well and they asked me if I could come in and I did that as a favor to everyone, as one more favor before other people started picking up extra because they had to cover for me on my vacation.

And, like 2 days before my vacation I was getting stressed from all that I was working and I didn't feel like being at work again and I was in the middle of all of these arrangements because I was heading out of town for 2 weeks, and the (Thai) (husband) restaurant owner sees me discreetly checking my phone for an email, and he immediately and sharply gets on me for doing that, with no recognition whatsoever of how much I had been working for him during the past week or that just 2 days earlier I had even come in on my day off as a special favor to him personally.

And, that really rubbed me the wrong way, and my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker could see how pissed I was and she tried to calm me down, but I said that I was finished bending over backwards to do favors for them, and from then on I was doing my minimum number of shifts each week, no more working extra for people, that I'd swap shifts around if people wanted me to, but no more extra.

I also started looking around at like 1-2 places for potential jobs to replace or taper off shifts at the (Thai) restaurant because it was starting to feel like I was tired of it because I had been there too long, but soon I got busy with fall conference preparations and everything fell by the wayside, and the lesser amount of shifts each week gave me distance from there and it started working for me better again, to keep working there.

A very sudden and unexpected end to my job...

...at the one (Thai) restaurant where I have been working for more than 3 years, at the one college town that I now live in:

I get in on a Saturday afternoon and when the (husband) (Thai) restaurant owner shows up, it's like his very very occasional behavior that he does to everyone where he doesn't know what's going on and he acts like you're stupid and he says that you need to do something other than what you're doing at the moment or why aren't you doing that etc. -- all very momentary things done very very very occasionally to everyone, that people roll their eyes at -- but it's like he shows up and he's controlling and he wants to show me that I'm not doing my job, with his first interaction being his asking me why I'm not standing behind the counter when my coworker is there behind it and I'm hovering by the edge of it looking to see when customers lay down a credit card so I can take their bill up, and later at the slow part of the shift when there's one table (paid up) and no work and everything is done he sees me briefly and discreetly looking at my phone and he gets on me about that, and like oftentimes happens on that slow weekend afternoon shift when my one (older) (Thai) coworker is done eating her shift meal I go and eat mine from off of the top of the ice machine just inside the door to the kitchen and I have my phone out to look at something and while I stand and eat he passes by and he asks me why I'm doing that and why I'm not outside, and after I clock off at the end of shift and I am standing behind the counter with more Diet Coke in my travel coffee mug and I'm looking at my phone there to check a text message while I'm waiting for someone to get out of the bathroom so I can use it before I go, he passes by and sees that and he asks me to come into the office, and without yelling at me he says that he knows I work mostly with the tables but why am I not helping out more with takeout -- on a shift where everything was done! -- and that I have a problem with my phone and that it looks bad for customers if they look in the window and see me and that he knows that I need to eat but if I'm there and my coworker gets a call and someone walks in the door I won't be there to help them, and looking at your phone while you eat makes you take twice as long, and it's like he's just assuming the worst and not looking into facts and making up all of these hypotheticals to make it so I'm not doing my job, when it was a slightly slower-than-average shift where nothing exceptional happened and everything got done, and at most he saw me look at my phone once during an exceptionally slow period.

Like, made up stuff and just blown-out-of-all-proprotion stuff, and it just took me by such surprise that I just nodded and let it pass by like I would when he did stuff like that in small ways -- and where would you even begin with something like this, where it's like they're vigilant to invent reasons to go after you? -- and after I left I was upset and I talked to my parents and various friends and the (young) (female) (white) bartender with (pussy hat) energy at the local brewery -- "That's toxic," she was like, about his micro-managing counter-standing comment that he began the interactions with, and she said that she would quit that job -- and so I decided to sleep on it, and the next morning I realized that I had tension in my shoulders from thinking of being around the (Thai) (husband) owner, so I sent him a workplace app text that it had stopped working out for me to work at the restaurant and please mail me my last paycheck and my tax documents, and I texted my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker that I wouldn't be coming in to work in 2 hours because I had left, and then I deleted the workplace messaging app, and I immediately felt better, from knowing that I would not have to walk into that restaurant and see him again.

It's like I suddenly reached my limit, and my body was rejecting the idea of the employment there.

I didn't quite realize what had happened at first, but it was like a latent bully suddenly escalated their behavior and I didn't quite see it at first, since it was similar to what had gone before, albeit that it was of such a heightened nature that it caught me off guard and I immediately knew that something was off and that something was different.

And, I mean, I had noticed his behavior early on in my employment there and I had *never* liked it and there was always a certain amount of coolness between us, but I had been able to manage it for a period of multiple years, until suddenly I couldn't.

Just very, very surprising behavior from someone who you've known a bit for a period of over 3 years, but what can you do...  It was his decision to act like that, and as the one (young) (female) (white) bartender with (pussy hat) energy at the local brewery put it, you're an employee, not a punching bag, and I'm not there for him to take his issues out on me by targetting me and playing "gotcha!".

Once someone goes to that level with you, it poisons the relationship and you can't be around them. 

Mysterious apprehension methods for a local postal thief.

Earlier this year like mid-winter, I went to go get my mail and check to see if a small package from my mother came in, and since the package wasn't there yet, again, I called out to my one (West African) mailman who was up the street to see if he had delivered it yet, which he hadn't.

"Okay," I was like, "I had thought it was probably just late, but I wasn't sure, because maybe it was like a package theft off my porch or something."

And, I told him about the recent package thefts at my one (Chinese from China) coworker's building where the guy even had the postal key, and he immediately knew what I was talking about, and he said that they had pictures of him and were sharing them all around.

"And I can't say much," he was like, "But if you see posters for the public, don't believe what they say, but they are investigating this and they know exactly what is happening."