Sunday, January 12, 2025

Three (younger) (female) (undergraduate-age) (South Asian-American) customers...

...who came into the one (Thai) restaurant where I work at, last year:

1) It's very very busy with an almost-full restaurant and we are running around helping tables in the order seated, and when we get to them, actually relatively quickly, they order one pad kee mao beef, which incidentally reveals them to be (Pakistani-American) or perhaps (Bangladeshi-American), but which they also insist is enough for the three of them, when I ask if perhaps they'd like another dish or two, too, for their meals.

2) Their food gets delivered, and as they're sitting there eating it and talking vivaciously and laughing and I'm still running around helping all the other tables, they energetically call me over as I'm walking by and interrupt what I'm doing, and  they tell me they'd like a second pad kee mao beef, and so I squeeze that in right then and there and go send their order to the kitchen right away.

3) Like twenty minutes later, they call me over and say they changed their minds and don't want it, and I say that that's probably no longer possible, and as I go back in the kitchen to check, there it is coming off the stove, and so I ferry it out and deliver it.

4) Out of the corner of my eye like two minutes later, I see them call over my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker and say something to her, and she immediately goes and brings them takeout stuff, presumably for the second pad kee mao beef that they decided they didn't want, since that's like the only food on the table, they hadn't ordered anything else.

5) They then sit there and eat all of the 2nd pad kee mao beef, not even using the takeout containers that they had specifically called someone over for, to have that brought out to them.

. . 

(That's a lot of immediate demands and course-changes -- an urgent second order, then an attempted cancellation, then a demand for takeout boxes, and then not using the takeout boxes and deciding to continue to eat there. That's actually like 4 different demands and course-changes, many of them doubling back on what they just demanded minutes earlier, and that's also a lot of energy for a single table that's buying just 2 dishes for 3 people and doesn't even care about wasting overhead for the restaurant by demanding unnecessary takeout boxes that they don't end up using. When I pointed out the full set of interactions to my one [chubby] [Thai] coworker, she just shook her head, since she had only brought them over the takeout boxes, and wasn't fully aware of what was going on.)

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