...when me and a few people were waiting up at the bar for a while for the bartender to come back from changing a keg in back or going to the bathroom or whatever, and one guy noticed that there was a copy of The Bell Jar up by the register, overturned to keep the reader's place:
"It's never a good sign when the bartender is reading Sylvia Plath," he was like.
Then, he was like, "I hope she comes back."
The other Friday night at the (Thai) restaurant where I work now, I began my spiel with a (mid-30s) (white) (professional) couple, and the woman volunteered that not only had they never eaten there before, but it was actually their first time really in town, and they were moving there.
And, I asked where they were moving from, and it turns out that they were moving from the city that I used to live in since she got a professorial job in STEM at the local university, so since it was slow when we began talking, I asked more, and I also briefed them on what they should know about different areas and real estate and crime etc.
Basically, the woman said she couldn't wait to move, and it was like everyone up there "forgot how to behave" and so the city feels like "the Wild West" and it just puts you "on edge" (her words).
She said she used to do tutoring all over the city and take the train home and it was like ten-thirty at night and she always felt safe and really never felt worried, but she just stopped doing that, and really going out at night.
She also said that in their neighborhood where they live now, there have always been some homeless people, but you kind of knew who they were and they had their places and their behaviors, but suddenly there were a lot more, and a lot of new faces, and behavior was more aggressive.
"Like when did this begin?", I was like.
"Twenty twenty-one," she was like, and I told her that it was that spring that I began noticing the same thing and I knew that I had to move, and I was out by the end of the year.
Our conversation felt so affirming, to know it just wasn't all in my head.
She also said that she agreed that she didn't think the situation up there would turn around anytime soon, and she was just looking forward to a more chill life.
...about an online order that was placed and channeled unchanged to the (Thai) restaurant kitchen, where a customer comment specified "easy on" some ingredient:
In so many words, they asked what "easy on" meant, and how it was related to the word "easy," and I had to tell them that it meant "less" of an ingredient, and it was a euphemism for that, like you act lightly when adding on onions or whatever the heck ingredient it was.
When customers at the (Thai) restaurant don't use their little lime wedges, I palm them when bussing the plates, and then slip them in my back pocket.
Later, I squeeze them and put the juice in my hair before going out in the sun, so I get some nice highlights.
Sometimes in at the (Thai) restaurant where I work now, we get people who display confusion and think we're a (Chinese) restaurant.
Like, some of that I can get, like we do have this really sh*tty sweet-and-sour stir fry on the menu, and we do also have egg rolls, so I guess it makes sense for someone to have asked once if we have spicy mustard for that, but then there's other stuff, too.
Like, once like a month ago this (lower-class) (white) couple brought their kids in and sat out on the patio, and they explicitly ordered a bunch of appetizers "like a Dim Sum."
...and who I got to chatting with, after he was in dining on the patio of the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, and he and this (similarly-aged) (white) woman he was in there with (his wife?) said they didn't recognize me and so they asked me how long I'd been working there:
He just shook his head, and he said in so many words that he's very, very pessimistic about the job prospects of the people graduating now.
(And that's a pretty good school, and in business!)
. . .
I also said that I was no longer actively pursuing a job through strenuous exertion like costly education or "paying my dues" in time-consuming and poorly-compensated low-level jobs that might not turn into anything, since I was already highly-qualified for any numbers of jobs in quite a few sectors, but instead was keeping my eyes open and was ready to leap if anything fell my way, and they both approved of that approach.
"Keep doing what you're doing!", the lady was like, approvingly.
1) There's cold pizza and chicken wings sitting out on the counter when I come in to open up the restaurant at noon.
2) There's a lunch rush that sustains into late afternoon, but then everything slows down a bit, and I talk to the one new-ish (young) (female) (Guatemalan) worker who works the deep fryer, and I ask her her name, and it's Maria, so I'm like, "Como la madre de dios" ("Like the mother of God"), and that seems to amuse her, and open her up a bit, from her smile.
I also ask her if she's surviving all of the work, and she's like, "Mas o menos" ("More or less").
(Like a week later, I leave the restaurant at night and she's already outside on the quiet street after shift waiting for her ride, sitting up on the deep stone window ledge of a nearby business and kicking her feet, while she holds her smartphone to her ear for something and just listens.)
3) At like eight PM, there's some delayed graduation event and suddenly we're absolutely swarmed with these huge groups of (South Asians) - 6 here, 10 there, 8 here, 18 there, all the tables but like one or maybe two (South Asian) -- and the restaurant is suddenly full and we're to close within the hour, so the owner commands that we shut the door at 8:25pm, and we do that for the night.
And, he also adds an automatic 18% gratuity on the bills of every table in there, ex cathedra.
4) Some (older) (unhappy-faced) (fat) (ashy-skinned) (South Asian) lady asks for a spice tray, and I tell her that we don't have it and I instead bring her chili flakes and chili paste since she says that's okay, and sometime later I hear some yelling and her voice is raised and she's talking loud and sharp to the owner as she just glares, and then later when they're walking out some (meek) (old) (balding) (bespectacled) (South Asian) man in slacks and a crisp collared shirt who was at the table sidles up to every staff member he sees and says that the food was very, very good.
