An evening at the (Thai) restaurant a few months ago:

1) A table of like three (middle-aged-to-older) (white) people sit on the patio, and they all decisively order a beer right away when they sit down.

“You’re the party table of [restaurant name],” I’m like, “Only be careful,” and at that I gesture to the pavement where someone had spilled their curry, which had left a stain that made it look someone had vomited there.

2) Like 8:30pm or so when we’ll still pretty busy, a(n early 30s-ish) (bit taller than average) (skinny-to-normal-build) (medium-skin-toned) (shaved-headed) (black) guy with (very unblinking) (wide open) (very light-colored) eyes comes striding in towards the back of the restaurant as I emerge from behind the back of the counter with a full water pitcher, and as we go to pass he suddenly turns towards me and motions to grab the water pitcher and bring it to his mouth as he says something about how he needs something to drink, as I suddenly pull the water pitcher back out of shock even before I fully realize what’s going on.

“Okay,” I’m like, “Wait here, I’ll get you a glass of water,” and I go back around the counter and I get a Styrofoam cup and put some icewater and a lid and a straw in it and I go reach over the counter and I give it to him, and he immediately turns and rips the lid off and starts drinking from it, and without even looking he throws his arm out and fires the lid as trash onto the then-empty wallside table where we sometimes keep some takeout, as he goes to go striding out the door.

And, I notice that my coworkers suddenly saw all that, and so I’m like, “Did you see that?”, and they hadn’t seen all of it, and so I explain to them what had happened, and I say that as soon as I realized he was trying to take and drink water out of my water pitcher, I just wanted to get him some water and get him the heck out of the restaurant, since he was that crazy.

And, I’ve never seen that guy before, and I have never seen him again.

. . .