A sight at the (Thai) restaurant the other day:

Under the glass slab on top of a front table by the window, that covers an artistically folded fabric swath underneath it, a brownish-gray spider slightly less than the size of a dime, that suddenly scurries forward a few millimeters, against the weight of the glass upon the table.

Restaurant dread.

When I'm at work at the (Thai) restaurant where I work nowadays, one of the things that most strikes dread into me is when a large-ish group of (Indian-looking) people come in, since somehow there always seems to be five of them and never six -- six is the point where the table gets an automatic 18% gratuity added on -- and when something like that happens, you could end up with a situation where you wait on everyone and split up checks for five people and whatnot, and for all of that work, maybe you make like a 10 or 12% tip, if you're lucky.

Though, if they seem like (Indian-American) and like they were raised here, your chances are much much better, of having a normal tip.

Recently, me and my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker have a game, where every time a(n Indian) table leaves, one of us runs to go and pick up the credit card receipt, to see how much they left us.

"Five bucks!", we're like, or, "Only a dollar!".

We both agree that like only a third of (Indians) tip normally, whereas with (Indian-Americans), it gets up to like two-thirds.

She also says (Koreans) are bad tippers, though when we get to the (Chinese), I have to disagree.

"There's a few," I'm like, "But overall they tip very well."

Some restaurant customers:

A (mid-20s) (slightly fat) (poorly-groomed) (weirdly bearded) (pasty white) guy with off eyes and glasses, and his (short) (fatter) (white) (dirty t-shirted) girlfriend with dull eyes, who's carrying a baby carrier with a very very small infant inside of it.

And, they sit at their table, and they put the carrier right at the end of the table where the baby's in the way of everyone, like people walking and tripping over the carrier, and where servers would have to serve food over where the baby is lying.

. . .

(After ten minutes of the baby being out there, my one [chubby] [Thai] coworker goes and offers them a highchair, and tries to figure out a strategy to keep the baby safe while they dine.)

Gluten free folk.

People who want gluten free in their orders are really f*cking whackjobs.

Like, the other day there was this (alternative-looking) (young) (black) guy in, and he wanted to know if we could make gluten-free crab rangoons.

"I don't think so," I was like, and I explained to him that there was gluten in the wontons.

"You don't have gluten-free wontons?", he was like.

He then also was asking about this one variety of fried rice, and I explained to him that there might be a little bit of gluten in the one particular sauce that they add to that one, so he asked me if I could go back to the kitchen and check, so, even though it was busy, I found myself running from all the way from the front of the restaurant to all the way in the back, to go and check on if there was even a little bit of gluten in that sauce.

(There wasn't, and he ordered it.)

Later, though, I was up at the table, and his friend had ordered the four-in-one sampler platter, and the gluten-free (black) guy was just going to town eating the breaded fishcakes and these shrimp things with these huge crispy breading offshoots that just spike up all over them.

Like, what the f*ck -- you have me run all the way to the back when it's busy to go check on if there's minute traces of gluten in some little bit of sauce in a dish you might get, but then you just go and eat deep-fried breaded shit from the appetizer platter that I brought your friend?

That's a real f*cked mentality.

I think a big part of it is that apart from people with like celiac disease, this gluten-free diet thing is more than a fad, it's pseudo-science, and people who are into pseudo-science tend to be wacky.

Work changes.

The other night at the (Thai) restaurant where I work now, I was working an evening shift, and at the very end of the night the one (Pentecostal) (Guatemalan) worker came out to speak with the one (older) (Thai) (lady) workers who's a blaze at the phones, and he said something about wanting to say goodbye.

"Tonight is my last night of work," he was like, to me.

"What?!", I was like.

 Then, I asked him where he was going to work now.

"I will mow grass," he was like.

. . .

I wonder if I will see him again; life can be funny like that, where you just never see a person again.

Work exchanges.

So, at the (Thai) restaurant where I work now, the one (Guatemalan) cook who I joke with about being el diablo de la cocina ('the devil of the kitchen') because there's huge flames sometimes when he cooks, started asking me how you say santo in English.

So, I told him that it was "holy" as an adjective, and "saint" as a noun.

But, he hasn't started making jokes with that yet.

The other day, though, he and another worker were having their late lunch out in front during a slow period in the late afternoon, so I went to refill their water, and I asked them if they wanted one or separate checks.

But, they didn't understand the word "separate," so I had to repeat myself, and I asked if they wanted one or two checks.

"Three," he was like.

Some jokes at the (Thai) restaurant.

The other week at the (Thai) restaurant where I work now, the one (tall) (thin) (Latino heritage) high school kid with longish wavy brown hair who waits tables there occasionally came in with his girlfriend, this foundationed- and eyelinered-up girl with dark dyed hair and very very white skin, and a predilection for dark clothes, apparently, since everything she was wearing was very very dark, clothes-wise, to match her hair.

And, when I went up to their table, I was like to him, "You know, you look a lot like this one guy who works here," or something like that.

And, he didn't get the joke -- it wasn't much of a joke, to be honest -- and automatically he started explaining himself and said he wasn't working too much lately, because he was all busy with the tennis team.

"Oh," I was like.

Then, I turned to his girlfriend and was like, "When he's not busy serving" -- and here I put on a big shit-eating grin -- "he's serving" -- and then I held that mug as I let the joke just hang in the air.

And, she got quite a kick out of it, and seemed to genuinely laugh.

She didn't seem too much of the happy type, either.