Two owner pieces of advice…

…at the (Thai) restaurant where I work now:

1) When I suggest to the (husband) owner that we start automatically gratuity-ing tables of 5 instead of starting at 6 because of the number of astoundingly demanding and disruptive (mostly South Asian from South Asia) tables that don’t leave a tip or any meaningful tip and whose behavior actually reaches the point that it's disruptive to other tables, he says to be “discreet” and “respectful” but when you pick up the bill, pretend to suddenly see the tip and be like, “Oh no, was everything okay with your meal?”, and when they say yes, be like, “Oh, but my manager will see this and will wonder what’s wrong and be mad at me,” and thereby clue them in that they should tip more.

2) When I was getting ready to bring out a stirfry with lemongrass and the (wife) owner with the tired face was plating it, she pointed to a small, thin and substantial hairlike strip that had come off the edge of some of the blades of lemongrass and was like, “Tell them this is not a hair, this is lemongrass.”

. . .