Tip totalling mishap, revealed.

I found out the other week when I was reckoning up tips at lunchtime, which I do sometimes, that the gratuity charge for groups of 6 or more is listed on a separate line that I hadn't been totalling when I tipped us out at the end-of-shift.

I figure that I've probably lost like around $150 bucks that way, since I've been working and totalling up tips at lunchtime.

My one (chubby) (Thai) coworker was working with me and asked me if I did that, which makes me wonder if she had noticed somehow that I hadn't done that at some point.

A coworker's strong feelings.

The other day at the (Thai) restaurant, I asked my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker how she was doing, and she was like, "My heart is breaking," then, she was like, "That is not the right word," and she explained that she likes some K-Pop groups and the fans of this one group don't like this other group and vice-versa, and the guy from one group and the girl from the other group are starting to date and that it's in the press everywhere.

And, she pulled up some video on her phone, of them walking somewhere and holding hands.

"So I am very, very sad," she was like.

"You know," I was like, "I don't think it's true, this is probably just made up for publicity so that people talk about the groups."

And, my coworker looked at me and laughed, putting her hand up to her mouth, and she just looked at me, and laughed, like the thought had never occurred to her before.

But, I'm not sure that she believed me.

Some angry customers the other day.

Like a month or two ago around just under an hour till closing on a very rainy evening, this (scrawny) (bespectacled) (Asian-American) undergrad, this (frizzy brown-haired) (white) undergrad with a shirt that showed her belly, and this (slovenly) (dishwater blonde) (fattish) (stubbled) (white) guy with a (mild) (Southern) accent came in.

And, different of us went up to them multiple times, and for like fifteen to twenty minutes they talked and said they weren't ready to order, and it was getting to be like thirty-five minutes till kitchen closed, so I finally told them that if they wanted to order, they should do it soon, since the kitchen was breaking down and cleaning various things, and especially if they ordered fish or roast chicken, the wait might be really long and they wouldn't have time to eat.

"Okay, okay, give us a few minutes," they were like, and then they ordered two minutes later.

And, I said they should put a dessert order in then, too, to make sure it got made, because if they waited, the kitchen might be closed.

 ("What did you tell them to make them order," my one [chubby] [Thai] coworker was like.)

And, by the time they got their food, too, the restaurant was empyting out, and they just ate leisurely and talked and laughed, all very oblivious, even though the other last (South Asian) couple who had gotten squeaked in ate up and left soon, since they saw what was going on.

And, we made sure to bus everything fast as a hint, but the one (Southern) guy told me to leave one plate of curry that the girl was done with, since "I want to nibble on that."

("Nibble," when the restaurant is practically closed!)

So, a while later I asked again since the same two or three bites of food were sitting there untouched, and the (Southern) guy was like, "I guess okay," resentfully.

And, we also had them reckon up the bill and we asked them to sign so we could close out the cash drawer, but that also didn't seem to hasten anything.

Plus, too, the [Asian-American] guy paid for everything, and it was like a 12% tip.

 Finally, it seemed like they were done with dessert, so I went to go bus it, but the (Southern) guy was like, "Don't clear it, we're keeping the last bite for our friend," meaning the (Asian-American) guy who had gone to the restroom to go to the bathroom before they all headed out the door.

"Okay," I was like, and then I was like, "Done with these?", pointing to all of the dessert forks on the table, and I scooped up all of them but his one, to take them away.

"Hey man," the (Southern) guy was like, still offended. 

 Then, he was like, resentfully, "I guess you can do that if you want."

And, the other guy came back, had his bite, and they packed up to leave from the empty restaurant.

I bit my tongue, but I really wanted to tell them that it wasn't an all-night diner, it was the end of the night at a (Thai) restaurant.

But, I didn't.

Phillip Glass music experiment.

So, like the end-of-the-week towards graduation -- the busiest time of year! -- I ended up cuing up the Phillip Glass channel on Spotify at the (Thai) restaurant so that it played on loop as an experiment, to see if anyone would notice.

They didn't for like two days solid, and it was just always playing.

My favorite part was how sometimes customer behavior would line up with the different songs.

Like, one (pale-skinned) (young) (brown) woman with ashen eyes was there with a date and slowly chewing, and she paused to look down...

And it was like a scene were someone thinks about their cancer diagnosis.

And, this one (young) (eyeglassed) (South Asian descent) (undergrad) girl was alone at a big table of six with all the menus out on it waiting for her friends, and she paused and looked over her shoulder out the window to see where everyone was, mournfully, and as she does this, there's Phillip Glass music playing.

Every once in a while, too, there was up-tempo happier Phillip Glass numbers, and one synched up with this big (Indian) family laughing and talking and passing around plates as they ate family style, and it was like a cutaway from a documentary about world population growth and an exponential extrapolation of numbers into the future, where the number of people on the planet just keeps going up and up and up.

I was telling people that we should have like a regular Tuesday night Glass Noodle Bonanza, where we play Phillip Glass music and everything with a woon sen noodle is ten percent off.

Like, if you can't do that in a college town with a music school, where can you do it?

It's a great gimmick.

Comment of a customer to me, like a month ago...

 ...from this one (white) (early-to-mid 30s) (pudgy) (clear-eyed) woman who I barely interacted with, who was there with a(n older) (white) gentleman:

"Excuse me, but I want you to know that you are the type of person who gives more than they get, and that's a gift and that I see that, and I want you to know that."

. . .

(They left a six-dollar tip.)

Some customers like a month ago:

1) A very (wide-eyed) (middle-aged) (white) lady who slowly comes in the front door, asks if we're open and to look at a menu since she's never had (Thai) food before, and then eats by herself in a back corner.

She leaves a $20 tip.

2) An (early 50s) (white) lady with a forearm tattoo but oddly prim (Southern) manners, and a short curled coif, who is very firmly like, "Come back in ten minutes," when I go to initially ask for any drink and appetizer orders, and who like ten minutes later pushes the menus to the very edge of the table so that they're perfectly lined up there and very visible, when she and her friend were finally ready to order.

"I'm sorry," I was like to my one (sound guy) coworker, "But that's the type of woman who gives their child an eating disorder."

"Totally," he was like, and he said that back when he was in high school band there was this girl who everyone thought had bulimia, since she was pretty big but every once in a while would lose a ton of weight out of nowhere. So, everyone suspected an eating disorder.

Customer service that got me specifically named in an online review as a good waiter...

 ...by a (New Jersey) mom who was visiting campus with her daughter, to check out colleges:

1) I talked college choice with them and economics, and how wage scales are collapsing (to which the mom noted that an older sister of the girl wanted to take an LA non-profit job but couldn't, since the salary no longer was liveable).

2) The mom asked if it was all right to take the cold sake bottle with her if she didn't finish, and I was like, "I don't know, so pretend you never asked that question, and just do it."

("Right answer," my one professor friend who studies modern [Czech] literature more or less commented, when I told her about that interaction.)

3) When the mom got a (Thai) iced tea to go with no ice so she'd have some caffeine in the morning when they woke up in their hotel room, I took a second and used a pen to draw the university logo on the side of the styrofoam cup.

"I'm dangerous when I'm bored," I was like, when I gave them the cup and showed that to them.