Restaurant antics.

The other week at the (Thai) restaurant, I was working a weekday dinner shift that was kind of busy, and when I popped into the kitchen to pick up two appetizers, the crab rangoons were plated, but the one (younger) (more quiet) (Guatemalan) cook was only just picking up the eggplant tempura out of the deep fryer and going to bring it over to the hot appetizer area to plate it up.

So, since he's nice, I decided to f*ck with him.

"Mas rapido mas rapido," I was like, "Estan esperando," and I snapped my fingers all the time really obnoxiously.

('Faster faster, they're waiting!')

And, he just looked a bit shocked, but he kept going at the same speed that he was going, and all the time that he was doing that, I just kept snapping my fingers and was saying, "Mas rapido, mas rapido"

And, finally he plated it up, and then he was like, "Corre, corre!' ('Run, run!').

And, he said something else in Spanish, but I didn't understand what it was.

Much later that same night, too, it was getting to the end of the night and some table of (math) graduate students ordered dessert, and I popped back into the kitchen to see if it was ready, and there he was again, heating up some custard as the coconut milk was boiling on the stove.

And, he saw I was waiting for the dessert, and I just started laughing, and didn't say anything.

"Mas rapido?", he was like.

"No," I was like, "Ya son muertos, no tienen comida" ('No, they're already dead, they don't have food').

Anyhow, the next day when I opened he was there, too, and after saying something about "mas rapido" when I first came in, he asked me if we could make up coffee for everyone in the back, so I did that, and I brought him a coffee cup to which I had taped a bit of an old receipt where I had written on the back --

PARA SENOR RAPIDO

-- which is something like, "For Mr. Fast," I guess, and right away he showed it to another coworker and they laughed, and he kept that little sign on his cup all morning long.