More restaurant tidbits...

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

1) My one (chubby) (Thai) coworker and my one (newer) (taller) (Thai) coworker really do wonder what business and tipping was like there before COVID; supposedly, the restaurant used to be pretty packed many nights of the week, but now a lot of people have shifted to take-out, and have just never returned to in-person dining like they used to.

2) My one (chubby) (Thai) coworker asks me what my favorite color is, and I'm immediately like, "The color of your eyes."

And, she's like, "Whoooooooooooooaaaa," appreciatively.

3) A (recent immigrant?) (slim) (jittery) (highly black) (African?) app delivery driver without much (English) just kind of hovers weirdly when it's time to pick up his order, and he even sits for a while in the prime window area where the customers sit and not at a table in the back, and then he disappears, and then the next thing you know, a man is waiting outside of the (women's) restroom to go in -- everyone is using the (women's) restroom, since the (men's) restroom is closed for some fixture repairs -- and then another table comes in and sits but they leave right away since a man there needs to use the restroom and goes up and sees the line, and he needs to go so bad that they can't wait, so they leave and we lose three customers, and then like five minutes after that, the first man still isn't in the restroom, he's still waiting, and then suddenly the (African?) app delivery driver comes out and grabs his order and hustles out the door, and water with a mild sewage stench is just streaming out from the bathroom door in a thin sheet over the floor, and it's a fairly busy Sunday lunch shift, and the (male) restaurant owner and a (Guatemalan) kitchen worker have to come out and unclog the toilet and mop up all the sewage-water, since it seems that the (African?) app delivery driver was doing something in there, including putting paper towels down the toilet and flushing.

"What the fuck," I was like, to my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker, who was working that shift with me.

And, I pointed out that we had signage about the paper towel thing, and he never asked to use the restroom like a lot of drivers do, and beyond that he took so long in the bathroom that he made us lose that one three-top and about $4 or more in tips each, and then who knows what effect that had on the other tips, to have sewage-water coming out into the center of the restaurant like that, even though we took care of it as quickly as we could and that whole thing maybe only lasted five minutes or so.

And, my coworker reported the driver to the app company, and I said she should block the driver so he never returned, but she wouldn't, she just put the like "Needs improvement" option and marked something about professionalism, which was pretty nice and speaks well of her, I think, though in this rare instance I do think we should have just blocked the guy, you don't need all that stuff like that in your restaurant.