1) I open my fridge, and a tallboy of locally-brewed beer that I keep in the door-rack is open and is going flat, since I forgot to drink it.
2) A big cardboard box of language books from (Germany) arrive, and I realize that I misread the citation again, and ordered something that I already had, rather than what I truly needed, and this has happened now a second time.
. . .
(. . .)
...like has been spreading the past year-and-a-half, where people just talk on speakerphone very loudly, or about awful things, or both:
Like a few months ago, I'm walking from the library on campus to the university butcher shop, and I'm giving my daily call to my parents and am just saying hello to them, and like a few yards away this (fast-walking) (South Asian princess-looking) (undergraduate) woman is passing me while going the same direction on the broad sidewalk, and she has her hand held out and her smartphone there is on speakerphone and she's talking SO LOUD, and it's bothering me a little bit, and suddenly, even though this girl is over on my left and my phone is held to the right side of my head, my mom is like "What's that noise?", since the noise from the loud speakerphone girl was so loud that it was actually audible to her over the phone, from a distance of like more than six feet away from my mouthpiece!
...at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, where they have a large group come in, and it's all like later-stage grad students, and it turns out that one of them had just finished his entomology dissertation on bees, and they had all come out to celebrate:
After I ask if that meant he "bee smart" and then right away I de-fang the obvious joke and ask if people make jokes like that a lot with them, the one says that yes, they hear jokes like that around the lab all the time, stuff like "be nice" etc., and then I ask if they get called "worker bees" at the lab, and another one says yes, they hear that all the time from their PI, he calls them little worker bees, so then, finally, I observe that it would be nice if their PI was a gay guy, since then they could go around calling him "the Queen."
. . .
(At that their eyes just got wide and they all kind of got silent, and then one [white] [female] chuckles and is like, "That's good.")
...at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now:
1) Since a scholarly book that I had checked out of the university library and was reading had to do with the one (indigenous) group that a lot of my (Guatemalan) coworkers are from, I took it into the restaurant to show everyone, and as soon as he sees it, my one (thinner) (older) (Guatemalan) coworker says he wants a copy, even though as far as I know he doesn't know (English) all that well at all to read anything, let alone a long scholarly book.
(It's the symbolic power, that a book in [English] is about his people.)
2) When a (younger) (chubbier) (nerdy) (bearded) (white) guy customer is in with some (thin) (non-descript) (college-age) (white) girl, he opens up that he recognizes me from the local popular lecture that I threw, and then he asks my name again, and I ask him how he found out about it, and he said through posters up around campus and it seemed interesting even though he does engineering and knows nothing about the subject, so he went, and so I went on a little bit about that, and anyhow, when they leave, there's a nice tip, and written on the receipt is "Thank you [my first name]" with a heart drawn next to it, which receipt I promptly show to all of my coworkers.
"See," my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones said, right away. "Now they know you are here, and they will come and kidnap you."
3) When my one (newer) (taller) (Thai) coworker's late elementary school age daughter is sitting at a corner table during dinner shift, she's eating these individually-wrapped gummy candies out of a big bag, and later right before she goes, she shares some with everyone, and written on the bag is -- THAI MANGO SOFT GUMMY CANDY.
So, I ask her where she got them, of course thinking they're something special from (Thailand).
"TJ Maxx in [notoriously shitty and rundown town like forty-five minutes away from the college town that I live in]," she was like.
Anyhow, since the little mango candies were shaped like apostrophes, I held one up underneath each of my eyes, and I told her that I was crying because she wouldn't give me more candy, while my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones held one up on each side of her mouth, and made as if they were fangs.
...at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now:
1) Whenever people order the hot sake, I inform them that that's the best deal on the menu, for amount of alcohol per dollar. "I call it the fraternity/sorority option," I'm like. "Are you pregaming for something?"
2) With certain select customers who seem (younger) and (cooler), I deliver my usual efficient line when I deliver water and menus -- "Would you like anything else to drink besides water right now, or would you like me to put in an appetizer order right away for you because you're super-hungry after work for crab rangoons or something?" -- only, I change up the line about being super-hungry after work a little, and after listing that possibility, I add, "...or maybe because you're stoned?".
3) When a semi-regular (shorter) (fatter) (late 20s) (Indonesian) guy is in with his (slightly taller) (thinner) (late 20s) (Indonesian) (female) friend, he's showing her some pictures of sushi on his phone while I'm table-side, and I ask if that's some good restaurant, and he said it was okay but it closed already, it was in a stripmall over by the Walmart, and then we get talking about sushi places around town, and I tell him what I've heard, and he says that none are very good, at best they're okay, and that at this one nearby one that people like, the sushi wasn't good at all, the rice actually fell apart when you went to pick it up, and he made a picking-up motion with his hands like he was using chopsticks.
"Or," I was like, saying everything clearly and simply for them as (non-native) (English) speakers, "Maybe the problem is that you are too strong."
And, at that his (female) friend started laughing appreciatively.
Below the mailboxes on the front porch of the fronthouse in front of the cottage that I live in, sits a medium-sized-to-smallish compact box, gnawed through and with some nuts peeking out from beneath the outer cardboard and some heavy plastic bag below that, with the address label being for my front neighbor who lives on the first floor.
. . .
(I pick up the box and take it around to their entrance and put it behind their storm-door, to further guard the gift-box of nuts from the local squirrels.)
...at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, this (older) (balding) (taupe-colored) (chronically un-self aware) and also (a bit chatty) (South Asian) man with (big) (wide) eyes and a longer turkey-neck with a prominent Adam's apple, and a (plumper) (darker) (quieter) (hyperaware) (South Asian) wife wrapped in a sari and a head-scarf and with elaborate henna designs all over her hands, and a (medium-size) (medium skin-tone) (presumably daughter?) (mid-30s) (South Asian) woman, who appeared to be a mix of their genes and who just sat and didn't do much, except keep quiet in order to keep the peace:
1) They come into the restaurant just before 9pm, and the man dislikes the table that we sat them at, and he asks to sit at the next table over, in the middle of the restaurant between the aisles of high traffic what with people coming in and out to pick up to-go orders, and yes, that's okay, and they go sit there.
2) The man asks right away if it's possible to do "no fish sauce, no oyster" sauce with everything, and to make sure that that is done with everything that they order.
3) As they strategize the meal, I endorse the man's idea of an appetizer and two entrees for three people of normal appetite, especially since they can always order an extra rice with the curry, and if they want an extra noodle dish or fried rice like they're talking about, that comes out of the kitchen very quickly, if the other 2 main dishes come out and they realize that they probably want more food, though in that case they also have the option of ordering a little dessert, too, if they find that they're still hungry, after getting an appetizer and 2 main dishes.
4) As they're deciding on the meal, I nudge them to order curry right away if they know that they want curry, since it's getting late and curry takes longer to prepare, so they (nicely) do that, and the wife seems to nod appreciatively at my raising this whole aspect to everything.
5) The (daughter?) wants to order both the tofu and the larger mixed vegetable mix in the pad see you for the $2 extra surcharge, but the man says no, just vegetable, they already have tofu ordered in the curry, and the daughter seems a bit crestfallen, but says nothing and just follows his diktat.
6) When they add in a pad kee mao to go, I ask them if they want utensils with that, and the man asks if they have to pay for them, and I say no, and then he says yes, they want plastic utensils with that.
7) As I resume my end-of-shift tasks and am sweeping around the restaurant, the man calls over to me and asks me how they would specify "no fish sauce, no oyster sauce" on a to-go order placed online, and I explain that if he's using something like GrubHub or Doordash, then that's something on their end and we really have no idea how the interface works since that's a separate business, but he can also just call and place the order through us or through our website, and that's easier for us to help with unless he wants to pay for delivery over the phone, and also it helps the restaurant from being price-gouged by the third-party contractors who take like $5-7 off of every entree ordered, at which the man very straightforwardly and very affably is like, "But they sent me a coupon for five dollars in the mail!", and then I'm like, yes, but then they get you hooked and you keep ordering from them by default, and then that price-gouging drives up prices at the restaurant, just like the credit card swipe fees do, and it's just like this look of non-response on his face, whereas the daughter seems mildly interested in this information, and the wife just looks on, knowingly.
7) As they're mostly through their curry, the man asks for another rice -- "And make sure it's hot!" -- to which I reply that it should be hot, we keep it all made fresh in a rice warmer -- and then he also asks if they can have more sauce, to which I reply that unfortunately that's not possible, since they always make every curry fresh to order including mixing the sauce, and something like that would have had to be specified right at the time of ordering, and we can do that for them in the future if they want, but in that case, they'd rebalance the portion size so it's less vegetables and more sauce, overall.
8) As I'm finishing up my end-of-task sweeping, the man calls out to me, "Long night, hey?".
9) As we're closing the restaurant and everyone is mopping, they're lingering at the table, and the man interrupts my (newer) (tall) (Thai) coworker to get their picture taken at the table, and she removes the to-go order from their table to set it aside on another table to make the picture nicer, and then she hands back the phone, and then they want a picture taken against the backdrop of a wall, so they get up and she takes that picture for them, and then she starts mopping again, at which point they linger a little more, as the man asks the daughter to take a picture of him and his wife, this time with an angle towards the front of the restaurant and the big tall windows there.
10) As we are finishing our final tasks and they are outside, they try the door to come inside again, only to find it locked since we had locked it like we always do at quarter-to-ten, but then, after they try it just that once, that's it, no knocking or anything like that.
11) As we all leave out the front, the three are standing there on the sidewalk right outside the restaurant door, and we all say good night, and the man comments that they're waiting for the taxi (Uber?), and as we leave, he calls out to us and asks if it's safe to be standing outside on the sidewalk like that, at that time of night, and we assure him that it is, as we leave.
. . .
