Customer levity, and discoveries.

1) This one (eccentric) (foreign-seeming) (gnome-like) (late middle-aged) (white) man who may have voted for (Trump) sits on the patio to dine, but then wants to leave when he finds out that our one (older) (Thai) coworker who’s a whiz at the phones isn’t working that night, since she’s the one who knows his very particular order.

So, as he leaves, I take his stuff back inside and explain what happened, but my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker is like, “I know his order, I know his order!” and she tells me to run outside and go get him, so I do, as he’s like a third of a block down the sidewalk from the restaurant.

And so, after re-seating him, I grab his water and cutlery and bring it back out to him, but when I come back inside again, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker is all hyped up and visibly quite nervous.

And, as it turns out, all that time she was trying to call our off-shift coworker who knows his order, but she wasn’t answering her phone, and so my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker begins to panic, and is all laughing and gleefully admits to me, “I don’t know his order!”

. . . 

(He eventually remembered some of it, and we were able to piece it together.)

. . . 

2) When I talk to these two regular (late middle-aged) (white) (evangelical) customers who always come in and who are always very nice and tip well, somehow I get on the topic of home-fermenting sauerkraut with the (curly-haired) (redheaded) wife, and when she indicates that she’s very interested in trying it to see what it tastes like and because it's "good for your gut," I say that it’s a shame that I didn’t know that before I came in to work that day, since I had just finished a very good batch and it’s worth trying, to which she says that she’ll actually be in that Friday night with people from work and I say that I’m not working then, but I can bring some in for her and leave it with my coworkers and she can ask them then and get it from them, then, and that’s what we can do if she wants to try some.

And, she does and I do that, and that happens.

And, when she asks them for my name so she can write me a thank-you note – you have to remember, you know all of these customers by face and they know us by face, but none of us know each other’s names, unless you maybe see that on a credit card – they tell her my first name, and she’s like, “Oh, like my husband.”

All that time, me and him shared the same first name, but none of us ever knew that!

My (Thai) coworkers talked about that quite a bit, afterwards.

“Oh, like my husband.”