Romanian humor.

On my recent back to the city that I used to live in, my one (Romanian) colleague told me one of his favorite jokes, involving this one stock character Bulă who is coded as good-natured but stupid and this other guy Iţic who is coded as normal or smart and sometimes as Jewish.

(For example, a G-rated Bulă joke has him as a schoolboy and his teacher asks him where he put the math book, and he says he filed it away in the library just like she asked, and she says she can't find it, and he says it's right there in the horror section.)

So, Iţic comes up to Bulă and is like, "Let's go to a group sex party."

And, Bulă is like, "Okay."

Then, later, Bulă comes up to Iţic and is like, "C'mon, we've got to get organized, I've been s*cking d*ck for a half hour now!" 

. . .

(Let that one sit.)

Trip happenings...

...on a recent short trip back to the city that I used to live in:

1) My one (Romanian) colleague asked me if as a server I ask people "Are you still working on that?".

"Only in America is having a meal work!", he was like.

(I do indeed ask people that.)

. . .

2) My one (lawyer) friend from (Missouri) picked up a one-or-two-evenings a week job as a hostess at a local restaurant, and when I mentioned that that's a good way to get out of the house, she said that it was that, but it's also a way to make some spare money, since she did just finally pay off her student loans, but she had a few splurge vacations, and inflation is really upping her expenses and her income is flat.

She also said that people are afraid to go out at night more, and that there's a lot of people having close run-ins with crime, like her plumber was telling her that he was almost carjacked in this one (hipster) neighborhood that he was doing work in.

(Upon my return home to the college town that I now live in, I read that there was a major drug-and-guns bust like 4 blocks north of where my train arrived into town, right around the time I was there, and also the one night that I spent in the city, there was a reinauguration of one ultra-scary way to roll businesses that had been around a few months ago but had seemingly stopped.)

. . .

3) When I went out to eat sushi with my one art school colleague who wears (women's) clothes, he ordered gluten free because of his rheumatological condition, and when we were discussing the menu, he gestured to the mark "(GF)" after certain items like the chicken teriyaki and was like, "I noticed that they mark this and it's so nice, they have a lot to offer."

"Is that gluten-free though?", I was like. "'cause maybe you're getting the chicken teriyaki, girlfriend!"

And, he laughed and was like, "Yes, it's both of those things, I am one of those white b*tches."

. . .

Two interactions with (Thai) coworkers...

...at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now:

1) When my one new (taller) (Thai) coworker goes to give me some herbal candy in a small yellowish-tan plastic canister that has nothing but (Thai) writing on it, I take it, but then I'm like, "I need to be careful, I know how Thai women are, you are going to poison me and take my money!", referencing this one famous female Thai serial killer case that's been in the news.

She laughed, and then later she offered me another one and was like, "Do you feel anything yet? Is it working? Eat more."

Still later, too, I told her that she lies, she didn't come here because her (Afro-Brazilian) husband cheated on her, she came here because she killed him for his money and she couldn't stay in Thailand because the police are looking for her.

And, she laughed.

2) One night when my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones wore a very textured white sweater rather than her standard black top, I asked her how she could wear that, since curry would spill on it and get it all stained.

"Because I don't work, I tell you to work, and you do everything," she was like, pointing her finger in different directions like she was indicating different tasks to me.

Some more restaurant happenings:

1) A (late 20s) (white) (blonde-haired) app delivery driver is waiting and waiting and one item keeps not being ready yet, so he finally cancels the order and leaves.

And, before he finally does that and goes, we chat some, and he says for some reason customers from our restaurant in particular don't tip the app driver that well, comparatively, and if it's an order that's like 7 miles away, if they do that, he actually loses money on gas with what the app pays him, which is actually just like a couple dollars per order.

"What a racket," I was like. "I feel like the internet has destroyed so many jobs, and it's just like nothing but sh*t like that nowadays."

And, he agreed, though he also said that he does this for spare cash since he took a pay-hit to work at a non-profit and do counseling there for $55K a year, versus the six figures that he could be making elsewhere.

"It would really suck if this was all I had," he was like.

2) When I deliver (five) crab rangoons to a (white) couple, I position it between them and say they'll have to fight over who gets the fifth.

"Her," the guy was like, pointing to his (husky-looking) woman. "She's pregnant."

And, we chat more here and there during their meal, and the woman says that she's never been a watermelon person, but with her first kid, she craved it, and there were times when she actually sat down and ate an entire watermelon at one go, just a whole watermelon, at once.

3) When a table of three (older) (lower-class looking) (white) people go to order, one woman asks me if she can sub out something from a sampler platter and sub in egg rolls, and I actually don't know if that's possible, so I go to say my standard line, "I don't know if we can do that, but I can go check," and as I say "I don't know if we can do that...", she leaps in and cuts me off and is like, "Well, can you go ask?".

And, I do, and my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones goes and calculates in her head, and finally she says that she can, but it will be two egg rolls and not one, and it will cost two dollars more.

So, I go back to the table and tell the (older) (white) woman that, and she's like, "I'm not paying that," and she just goes and orders a plate of fried dumplings.

Unethical behavior.

Sometimes lately I shy away from telling customers in large groups that there's an automatic 18% gratuity on the bill; though it says that there, sometimes they don't notice, and they leave more of a tip again.

The other week that happened with a (South Asian) guy who left $20 on the $189 ticket price that he must have glanced at, and somehow I felt that was karma.

One app delivery driver:

A (short) (wide-eyed) (light brown-skinned) (African) man, who always whacks the handicapped door opener every time he enters or exits the (Thai) restaurant where I work now, and so lets just absolute floods of cold in the door, every single f*cking time he goes in or out of the place.

Online customer order comment...

...for a curry for delivery, verbatim:

Please make it with NO EGG, NO MEAT. This order is for a pure VEGETARIAN.

. . .

(One is forced to wonder if they meant degree of vegetarianism, or are obsessed with their personal bodily purity. Perhaps the first, and the second meaning is what they truly think, and it bled through, though not in the manner of actual blood, but more like sap or stalk-secretions or oat milk, definitely not blood.)

(People really do have different definitions of vegetarianism, though, where people self-identify as such but can permit eggs or fish or oyster sauce, or one but not the other, or neither.  Like last month or so I took a phone order from a [trans] man where I had to ask for clarification when they said something like "Make it vegetarian," and when I did that, they started lecturing me on the different true meanings of "vegetarian" versus "vegan" or some shit like that, and I had to politely tell them multiple times that people mean different things and I always have to clarify, but it's like they were devoted to setting me on the one true terminological path, and they had me briefly trapped on the phone.)

(Still, though, these people are much better than the gluten-free folk, who are the total whackjobs.)