Another day at the (Thai) restaurant where I work now, with the return of diablo:

1) A new (Guatemalan) guy has started working in the kitchen, and it turns out that he has the same first name as my one (Pentecostal) (Guatemalan) coworker, which opened up the door for me to make all sorts of (Spanish-language) jokes about who’s el primero [their first name] (‘the first ---‘) and who’s el segundo [their second name] (‘the second ---‘), and then who’s el mejor [their first name] (‘the better/best ---‘) – of course my (Pentecostal) (Guatemalan) coworker said it was clearly him, when I asked – and also saying stuff like adios los [their name]s (‘bye ---s’) when I leave at night. 

And, once when I said something about el otro [their name] (‘the other ---‘), some of them overheard and immediately they were like, “Oh, diablo!”, and they started up chattering about that, and the word diablo started flying about me again for some reason on this occasion, although oftentimes in the recent past I have been engaging in similar behavior and it goes unremarked upon.

2) The one (Guatemalan) guy who I started the diablo joke told me that the one (very young) (Guatemalan) woman is moving to California and the next day was her last day, so I talked to her, and it turns out that she has an uncle out there, and she will also be living in a university town out in California. Since I wasn’t going to be working the next day, I made sure to tell her that I heard the news and to wish her buena suerte con todo (‘good luck with everything’), and she wanted to take a picture with me, so we did that. That night, too, she was waiting for her ride inside by the door when I left, so I again wished her good luck, only I made motions with my arms, too, and was like buena suerte con el surfing (‘good luck with the surfing’), which she got a kick out of.

3) My one (Chinese-American) coworker was making a delivery and had his car parked and was about to leave and drive away when two (white) (college-age) (girls) pulled up and one swung her door wide open and it reached all the way over and knicked his door, and so he just rolled down his window and was like, “Really?” to them, he said to me.

(He said that that put him in a really bad mood.)

“Not to stereotype, but that’s a very white thing to do,” he was like.

. . .