Stained glass booth.

So, back in June I went to the local (Pride) streetfest with the one (gay) (Brazilian) visiting STEM student to meet up with some of his friends, and at one point I walked the little festival booth strip, and there was a (young) (biracial) (hippie) girl at a stained glass booth with some Pride stuff, some abstract stuff, some natural world-themed stuff, and several wall-hangings of cobs of corn that also kind of resembled vaginas.

"You know," I was like, "I hate to say this, but those kind of look like vaginas."

"Oh no problem," she was like. "I've been hearing that a lot today."

She then said that one woman said that she herself runs a stained glass business that specializes in vaginas, and that that stained glass image looked like a vagina, and that she "wanted her to know that."

A moment of non-recognition.

The other week at the (Thai) restaurant where I work now, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker came in, and I didn't recognize her at first since she was bustling in the front door decisively with her head down -- a posture of hers that I've never seen before -- and even more than that, she had her hoodie up around her face, and her glasses were big and dark and covered her eyes (I later realized that they're the type of glasses that become sunglasses in the sun, and normal indoors).

Right after she went to our sideroom and put that stuff away and started working, then, I then commented on it, how I hadn't recognized her at first.

"You can see why celebrities always wear hoodies and sunglasses!", I was like.

I then said that she was walking around our college town like she's a K-pop star.

Both she and our one new (college age) (Thai) worker got a kick out of that.

Addendum.

After the two thefts happened at the (Thai) restaurant where I work now and we changed part of our delivery system in response, the one (tall) (thin) (Latino heritage) just-graduated-from-high-school kid with the (pale-skinned) (dyed-hair) (dark-colored-clothes-wearing) disaffected girlfriend who likes my jokes was asking me about it, and he seemed vaguely disturbed, like he was waking up from some sleep and had truly begun to perceive some other world existing around him that he had never known before.

"But how do they know there's anything here to take?", he was like.

"You can see from the front windows," I was like. "They can just walk by, look in quickly and see stuff out, and decide to come in."

And, he looked vaguely upset, and I added, "And, if it's busy in here, it's not like we'd notice that, and they could easily see all of the packages laying out."

And, he didn't have much to say, and the world being this way seemed slightly painful to him, nor did its devious way of thinking seem to come naturally to him.

"Have you seen Blue Velvet?", I was like. "It's by David Lynch, the guy who did Twin Peaks."

"No," he was like, and he said he had heard of him, but he'd never seen anything by him.

"Well, you need to see Blue Velvet now, now that you've seen the dark underbelly of small town life," I was like.

Then, I was like, "You should watch it with your girlfriend, like a date night."

And, he said he would, if he could stream it or download it.

. . .

(A part of me wondered if that was a little much, but they just came back from an unchaperoned weekend-long camping trip together, and he's wondering about these parts of life, so why not. And plus I think the girlfriend would dig it, though I think it might freak him out.)

Two restaurant thefts.

So, at the (Thai) restaurant where I work now, we had two recent restaurant thefts this past month.

Like, when you walk in towards the back, we have a large table pushed against the wall, and six little table tents with numbers where we lay out the different delivery orders, the ones that need payment closer to us, and the ones for pick-up by app drivers farther out towards the end towards the front door.

And, one weekday, an app delivery driver came in, and their order was already gone, and we realized that someone had walked in during a busy time like they were an app delivery driver, and by the time we asked them for the name on the order they had already gotten up to the table and were looking at the receipts stapled onto the bags like they were an app delivery driver and they just read the name off of whichever one there that they were looking at then, and so they snuck past us and took one and walked out with it without us knowing that anything was wrong at the time.

And then, two days later, the same thing happened again.

My one (older) (Thai ) coworker who's a whiz at the phones said that that order was one that a customer had prepaid online and come in themselves to pick up, and when she had told them that someone stole their order, the customer was like, "Are they bringing it back?", and she had to be like, "No, someone stole it!".

A long time ago before I started working there we had already put the ones that need payment closer to us, so that we can keep track of them and also keep the delivery drivers away from the counter and the tip jar -- a while ago someone took money out of the tip jar, she said -- but now she decided to put the app delivery driver orders behind the counter, so we have to verbally confirm and hand them over and there's no way that someone can just come in and take one.

She said that we had this happen twice before but it was years ago and those times were a long time apart from one another, but to have two happen in three days shows that word had gotten out and people were targeting us, and so we have to be more careful to prevent it.

Some interactions with a large (Arabic-speaking) party...

...the other night at the (Thai) restaurant:

1) The first of the three (Arabic-speaking) (30s-ish) couples arrives and they have no baby, but the (medium-level veiled) (ashy-skinned) woman is like, "We need a high chair."  So, I was like, "Okay," and then I was like, "When you say, 'We need a high chair,' it sounds like you are announcing a pregnancy, and I should say, 'Congratulations, I am so happy for you!'" And, the (darker) (moustachioed) guy smiled at the joke and was like, "Not yet, perhaps in several years."

2) That same couple later orders one of our items that has "devil" in the title, and since at that point the couples with children had arrived, I was like, "Are you sure you want to order the Devil Fish? That is a bad example for the children!"

3) Although we had tried to encourage them to order quickly and simply if they wanted a leisurely meal since it was getting towards the end of the night -- they didn't -- the one (Saudi-faced) guy from one of the other couples turned to me when I was clearing plates at the end, and was like, "I hope that we did not cause you too much pain."

4) When the whole party is done eating and lingering and the restaurant is otherwise empty and they just won't leave and we are just sitting around since we are done with all of our other work, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker goes and dims one lightswitch, to dim like half the lamps on one side of the restaurant ceiling. And, I kind of hide, since I'm embarrassed to do that, even though I want them to leave, too. F*cking people.

Some bad news travels fast.

Last month at work, I was working and hopped on Twitter and saw the breaking news about the (Guatemalan) youth who was crushed to death in an industrial accident in Mississippi.

And, I mentioned the news to one of my (Guatemalan) coworkers, and they had already seen the news.

I also mentioned the other recent deaths of several (non-Guatemalan) youths in other dangerous jobs and I said something like "los Republicanos son locos" ("the Republicans are crazy"), and I also said something about how they want children to work in dangerous work, but they had not heard of the other deaths, nor of the Republican position on child labor and workplace safety.

The workweek of a (Guatemalan) coworker.

A few weeks ago, I was chitchatting with my one (Guatemalan) coworker who inspired the diablo joke when it was slow, and he mentioned something about needing to work more hours, and I asked him how many hours he worked this past week, and he said 60, and then I asked him how many people in his family he supported back home.

And, he said his parents, and also his two siblings, and that he was paying for his brother to go to high school.

"It's not like it is here," he was like.