Addendum addendum.

It's interesting how on the whole (Chinese from China) students are a lot more conscientious with tipping.

Like, you get a few stinkers, but otherwise you see a lot of people trying to "do it right," even after they've just arrived into the country for school and it's clear they don't quote know how the system works.

Like, I've seen a (Chinese from China) customer go to pay the bill and give their credit card and they ask me to put on a 15% tip, since they don't know that they get the receipt back and they write it on that and the amount is then adjusted later to account for the tip -- something very endearing, since they want to do right, but just aren't oriented yet!

Similarly, I see a lot of tips that are **exactly** 15% to the penny -- stuff like $2.43 -- whereas a customer from a tipping culture might round up a little, to make it a flat $2.50 or to make the bill amount plus the tip make a round number in total.

My one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones was also reminiscing about a (female) (foreign) (East Asian) (presumably Chinese from China) (presumably student) customer who didn't realize the payment system and brought the bill up to the counter to pay rather than leave it on the table, and she had to explain everything to her, including the area for tip, and the customer was like, "Thank you, I don't know, I will take this and ask my American friend," and she took the bill and went back to the table and figured everything out with her friend.

"Someone has taught them," my one (newer) (taller) (Thai) coworker was like, when we were discussing these differences, between the (Chinese from China) and (foreign) (South Asian) (student) customers.

Addendum.

At the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, my one (taller) (new) (Thai) coworker and I were talking about common behavior from (South Asian) customers, and she told me that her mom faces the same stuff all the time, at the (Thai) restaurant where she works that's closer to campus.

That restaurant is counter-service and the customer places their order and pays and then waits for it to be cooked up and then they take it to a table and eat it there or take it away, but a lot of times her mom starts cooking, and then a (South Asian) customer tries to change the order.

"NO, I CANNOT CHANGE YOUR ORDER," her mom runs out from the back of the kitchen and says, when that happens.

"Her boss lets her do that," my one (taller) (new) (Thai) coworker was like.

I pushed for more details -- with these requests, did they try to change ingredients, or switch entire dishes, like from a fried rice to pad see you? would the requested change change the amount that they had to pay, like where they were expecting you to negate or adjust the payment they'd already made? -- but she didn't know the specifics.

But, I want to find out!

My mother stereotypes.

For the first time ever in my life (I think?), my mother just laid out a broad-based black-and-white stereotype:

"Indians are rude," she was like, after she had asked me on the phone about how my previous shift at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now had gone, and I had said that there had been some weird customers, and then I explained the thing about how a lot of (South Asian) customers cause chaos and try to change orders etc. after they place them, which I now counter by doing what they request if possible, but then gently being like "Mistakes happen, but we appreciate it if your final order is your final order, to minimize mistakes in the kitchen if we have to talk to the cooks and interrupt their work..."

(I'd never gone into detail like that with her before, about all of the happenings with [South Asian] customers.)

(Additionally, the logic of the strategy is like correcting odd freshman behavior, back when I was a writing instructor; you not only point out correct behavior, but you also assume that they're acting out of lack of information and so you try to explain the full environment and expectations and how things work, though I suppose that works better when you're an authority figure with salary coming from elsewhere, versus a subordinate dependent on good-will and tips.)

As it turns out, when she used to work as a "stewardess" (not "flight attendant") back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, my mom had some customers like that, and that stereotype was a by-word among that profession, to the point where she still thinks it fifty years later (!).

She was also saying that my godmother's (dead) husband had worked in customer service for the airlines for a while, and it was infamous to get a (South Asian) customer on the phone with a complaint, since there would always just be this repeated line about "Compensation, compensation!" and "I need compensation!".

New neighbor doings:

The (new) (front upstairs) (college age) (Indian-American) and (white) (dating-each-other?) neighbors have put a new doormat out that's shaped like a small cluster of cherries, so many nights when I get off work and go up to the front house to check the mail before I go in for the night, I walk up the front steps, and in the shadows it looks like a depiction of two big dangling testicles, just sitting there on the front porch.

Dust bunnies.

After I cleaned up from my bedbug scare and also did laundry for my recent trip, suddenly these big light grey dust bunnies were everywhere, especially in my bedroom, like just this surprising amount of them, even though I'd just cleaned my entire cottage top-to-bottom, including sweeping and even washing the floor there.

Like, you'd clean them up, and then you'd start seeing shadows out of the corner of your eyes the next day all about everywhere on the floor-tile, and you'd get down and look, and there, there were more dust bunnies again.

I think my putting this fake fur-textured blanket into the drier for prolonged periods of time to kill any remaining bedbugs or eggs did something to its fibers, and somehow that's what's producing the dust bunnies, although I never see any fiber-clumps up on that blanket on my bed.

A sign of increasing local homelessness...

...in the college town that I now live in:

My local bank that I've used now for almost three years, now has a sign on the front door that restrooms are for customers only.

. . .

(I asked what was up with that to the teller, and she said that they didn't want to, they've always let people use it, but people started stealing the toilet paper and even the bathroom deodorizer products, so they had to put the kabosh down... She also said that she recently found out that there has been a homeless man who takes a tent and sets up between the external drive-through ATMs under this big external canopy right outside the bank, on weekends especially long weekends once everyone is gone from the bank -- somehow he lost track of time recently, and he was there one morning when staff came in, and the jig was up, and none of the people at the bank had ever seen that before, either.)

An exchange about Jesse James.

When I recently toured the Jesse James birthplace, the guide in the adjacent museum was explaining something to me and mentioned some aside about Zerelda, and he then made sure to specify that he meant Zerelda James's wife, and not Zerelda James's mother.

Later up at the house, too, Zerelda came up again, so I took that opportunity to ask about how there came to be two Zereldas like that.

"It's a family name," the guide up at the house was like. "He married his first cousin, and she was named after her aunt."

. . .

(For like two days afterwards, this exchange would make me laugh, whenever I thought about it.)