…at the one (Thai) restaruant where I work now:
1) When it’s extremely busy, I duck into the hallway leading to the kitchen and I see my one (Guatemalan) coworker who always tries to f*ck with me and he’s super hustling but his eyes are bugged out and you can tell he’s hustling but also kind of stressed from the sheer amount of work that everyone is having to do, so I call out to him and am like, Porque no estas trabajando (“Why aren’t you working?”), and the (Thai) (husband) restaurant owner sees and hears me and is like, “Hey! Get to work,” even though I don’t think he understood what I said.
2) When I ask this (bright-eyed) (happy) (Indian from India) father who was treating out his son and like a huge table of students whether they want desert like mango sticky rice, he asks them, and none want it, and he turns to me and with a twinkle in his eye is like, “You fed them too well! And these are young people.”
3) There’s new oranges every day underneath the small shrine to the house spirits, that’s on the back counter behind the glass rack where we keep the tall textured glasses for the Thai iced teas.
4) Among some specialty baked goods that I bring in one day as snacks, there's a curry cookie, and after having a bite, my breath fills my KN95 mask full of the smell of curry, almost like a perfume, and I keep re-inhaling that curry flavor for hours.
5) During that long weekend, I get to thinking about front of the house vs. back of the house dynamics, and I wonder how much if at all the back of the house staff are making from all of this extra work.
6) A(n old) (addled) (Polish) woman trips on the foot of a heavy stand-up wooden room-divider that we shield the passage to the women’s restroom with, and since she has a gash on her elbow, I have to go get a band-aid from the First Aid kit back in the back utility closet.
7) On Friday night after work I really feel like a beer, so I stop by the nearby liquor store to get a single tall-boy of something craft, and I run into the one (tall) (good-natured) (young) (Thai) cook stopping by to pick something up, too, on my way out.
8) I bring in some raisin bread and cut it up when we start lunch shift one day, and it’s so busy that it barely gets eaten, and I remember hours later about my huge cup of coffee that I had brought in like I usually do for those shifts as well, only it had satten there unsipped all that day, for hours, it was that busy.
9) In advance preparation for the long weekend when they have me fold extra silverware and they tell me to put it in some box, I start laying the bundled silverware upright or in odd positions rather than in orderly rows on the bottom of the box, and when people notice, I’m like, “Oh, sorry!, no-one ever told me how to place them in the box.”
10) When it’s unclear where exactly we’re going to sit a large (Indian from India) party with a reservation when they come in – sometimes we have to plan several steps ahead so certain configurations of tables free up later, and I defer to people with more experience with that form of planning – I tell them that we have room for their reservation, but I also kindly ask them to wait one minute because we need to make sure that we keep the right combination of tables open, and I say something about how I can’t do anything until I hear back from my coworker and she tells me what to do.
“Just like my marriage,” says one (Indian from India) man softly to me right after I say that, as he passes by me.
11) My (newer) (taller) (Thai) coworker is mad because the owner didn’t schedule me on Saturday night, which is set to be the busiest night of the year, but he did schedule our (Chinese from China) coworker instead, who’s not only been there not as long as I have, but also wilts under pressure and can’t keep it together as much as I can when it’s extremely busy.
“With you, I don’t have to worry, you can hold down the front of the house yourself,” she has told me.
“So you want me to ask [the (Thai) (husband) owner’s first name] if he will put me on shift?”, I was like, and she just gave me this sharp formal nod that I call her businesswoman nod.
But, he said he would only pay me host wage if I stayed, no share of tips, so I said no, and if they needed me to work, they could call me and I would come in and work for tips.
(They didn't.)
And, my one (newer) (taller) (Thai) coworker and my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker later told me that it wasn’t that busy – that’s that (Thai) conflict avoidance -- but our (Chinese from China) coworker was later gushing about how it was the best tips of the year, like $215 for the entire shift, and people didn’t stop coming all evening.
(To tell the truth, I was a little mad, even though the money that I lost out on was maybe $70-80 above a standard high-paying shift… I’ve been there longer and am a more dependable worker and a better high volume worker and our [Chinese from China] coworker was even looking to maybe change jobs this winter, and he’s the type of person to take and never contribute, he almost never brings in food to work although he eats what everyone else brings in, and he never even looks ahead to make sure that people will be around when he needs time off, either… To move forward, though, I guess I learned that I need to explicitly ask for high volume shifts, when those days roll around every year…)
12) At one point I go to refill a water pitcher but I don’t notice that the high-pressure nozzle that swings out over the hand-washing sink is positioned so the stream will jet just outside of the sink-basin, and so when I turn it on, it happens to squirt all over the tennis shoe of my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker, who happens to be standing right there.
And, I find out later that her shoe got so wet, that she had to run home and change shoes, it was that bad and that uncomfortable.
13) Sunday night after close, they throw out a spread of Whoppers and stuff from Wendy’s, for all the staff to have for food after work.
14) When I get my check for cumulative tips after the weekend, I cash it at the bank, only to get it returned later since the (Thai) (husband) restaurant owner had been so tired, that he forgot to sign the check.
And, I have to go through this whole procedure where they reverse the transaction but also send me a legally valid facsimile of the check, and if he signs that and I bring it back in, it’s okay, and the money will go through.
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