Random restaurant happenings...

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

1) As I finish explaining things table-side one evening on a slow-ish night, a customer just turns to me and looks up at me and states out of nowhere, "You really enjoy your job here."

2) Upon return from the Christmas break when we were closed for a few days, the ornamental gourd that we've had on the front counter since before Thanksgiving has collapsed from internal rot that manifested while we were closed, and the entire ice holder up front under the soda fountain is empty since all of the ice melted away while we were closed, and I'm excited to fill it up and see how many buckets it holds, and it's either five or six, I'm not sure because I lose count as I fill it, I'm so sleepy that morning when I come in after break and am working again and am doing my opening duties again after so many days off.

A new restaurant policy, because of a notorious problem customer.

So, at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, we recently started the policy where if a pick-up order comes in after 9:30pm, we have to take payment over the phone, otherwise we can't accept the order.

Like, the kitchen closes at 9:45pm (an hour earlier on Sundays), and sometimes we're open a bit later if there's multiple late pick-ups or some late tables in the restaurant, but most times, we want to close the door right away and be out of there at like 9:45pm straight, it's just not worth it to hang around for one order or for one table, especially with multiple employees sitting there and twiddling their thumbs and just waiting all that time.

So, anyhow, there's this one (late middle-aged) (scrawny) (weird-eyed) (black) woman who pretty much always orders the same (vegan) dish, and is just a source of chaos, and no tips.

Like, I think there was something happening at some point where she got blacklisted from delivery, since she lives way the heck far away -- I think like a twenty minute drive in one direction, to a far side of town? -- but would never tip on a late last-minute delivery, or ever.

So, anyhow, that night that we worked, she called in her (vegan) order at like 9:30pm, and we reminded her that the doors close at 9:45pm and she said she knew, and she was like, "I'm on my way," and then like we often do with late customers whose take-out is ready, we called her at like 9:42pm to tell her that her food was now ready for pick-up and that doors close at 9:45pm, at which she was like, "I said I know, I'm on my way," and then she didn't show up, so like after 9:50pm, I'm like, "I'm clocking out," and my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones stayed along with a few other people to stay safe in the restaurant until this customer showed up, and I asked her to note when she finally came because I was curious about that, and then, I left.

And, the next shift I worked, I asked, and it turned out to be like after 10:10pm, a full 40 minutes after she placed the order, and they couldn't even cash out the register all that time, since the order went unpaid until finally that customer showed up.

Hence, the new policy.

When we were all talking about that, too, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker was just shaking her head, and she said once during the summer they had already closed up the patio and chained up the patio furniture, and this customer showed up late and wanted to dine in and she wanted to eat outside, so my coworker opened up the patio for her, and, even after doing all that, no tip.

"She is like that," my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker was like.

She also said that like a month or two previously, this customer had showed up during the day to pick up an order and didn't have enough money -- she was something like twenty cents short -- and so my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker told her to go back to her car and look for change there in the cushions or in the cup-holders or wherever, because she needed to pay the full amount for the order in order to get the food, and if she didn't have the full amount of money, she couldn't get the food

"Another customer, it's okay, I pay, it happens," she was like. "But not her. She is not a good customer." 

As she said that, too, she seemed a little proud of herself, that she had stood her ground and made the customer comply, this customer who so often took advantage and abused the trust of so many people who served her. It was like a mark of pride.

"Yes, I saw that," my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones said, nodding and smiling, when my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker related that story.

Another feat of environmental neuroticism.

Whenever I make sauerkraut, you're supposed to keep a few whole outer leaves to push on top of the shredded cabbage and tuck down around the outer edges, to keep it submerged during the fermentation process, since if any cabbage floats up and breaks the water and stays there, it can allow bad bacteria to thrive and bridge down into all of the underlying cabbage that is only apparently submerged and separated from the ambient air, but is not in actuality.

Only, you have to be careful that there's no dirt on those outer leaves or even like weird slightly-discolored abrasions that might harbor residual dirt, since that can introduce big amounts of bad bacteria into the cabbage at large, and it can then take root in all of it and go on to spoil the whole entire batch.

So, lately, what I've been doing is keeping any of those big outer leaves with slightly weird spots, and carving out the weird spots, and then keeping the remaining cabbage leaves to eat in salads.

I mean, I wouldn't risk it for fermentation, but there's still perfectly good leaf there, that you can use for other things and eat in different ways.

Why waste it?

Mysteries of life.

Whenever I drop off a jigsaw puzzle at the "take one, leave one" honor-system jigsaw puzzle exchange table in the foyer of the local library in the one college town that I now live in, I try to stop by there around the same time that I dropped it off on successive days, to see how long it took for my one newly-introduced jigsaw puzzle to go.

And, a few months ago, I dropped one off on a Saturday morning, and each day it wasn't going, and then on Tuesday I forgot to go back and check, and then when I went there to go check on Wednesday, it was gone.

Now, I'll never know exactly how long it took for it to go, and whether it went from Monday into Tuesday, or from Tuesday into Wednesday.

Colonoscopy!

People say that colonoscopy preparation is a bitch, but the all-liquid diet really doesn't bother me all that much, it's more the not having food or liquid for much of the day of the actual colonoscopy, more than the liquid diet itself on the day preceding it.

In fact, I rarely buy highly-processed foods or even go down those grocery store aisles, so it's something different for me to even stroll down the big grocery aisle of soda-pop, or to look at all of the types of juices that I might buy... It's all like, "'White grape mango cran-apple'? What in heavens is this?!", and I just bask in the array of consumer choices, as I look at all of the labels and I just want to try them all, each and every one of them (which, incidentally, is *exactly* the response that all those companies want you to have, when you walk down that grocery aisle and begin looking at all of those products).

It was also fun to buy the Jellos of all the types that I don't usually buy, since I usually buy off-brand sugarless Jellos that come in just four flavors (strawberry, raspberry, orange and cherry).

"Yes, let me get 'Island Pineapple'!"

The person who accompanied me to the appointment was the one (lesbian) sister of my one (former) (assisted living) client with (disabilities), too, since I've helped her out with a similar type of appointment that she had before, too.

And, since she has a particularly filthy sense of humor, I prepared a joke for when I first came out from under anesthesia and saw her, like I'd pretend to be super groggy, and I'd be like talking to myself and be all like, "I had this dream, that I had the most marvelous husband...", and then I'd pretend to slowly come to and be like, "Hey, [her name], what are you doing here, where am I...?", only, unfortunately, the anesthesia really did a number on me and I can't quite remember if I did that, when I first came to.

Oh well, you have to try.

Some more Luigi happenings.

During the height of the whole Luigi craze that has now died down, it first came out that he went to (Thailand) for a bit on his "trip to the East."

So, I told my one (newer) (tall) (Thai) coworker that it's her fault that he's a criminal, he likes (Asian) women, and that if she was still in (Thailand), she could have met him and saved him.

"You're in your head too much, let's go play basketball and swim," I was like, pretending to be her meeting Luigi.

(She's very athletic.)

"You could have saved him," I was like.

I also asked two (younger) (HAPA) (grad student) (STEM) people who are regular customers what they thought of Luigi, and to rate what they thought about the health insurance CEO assassination on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 was full disapproval, 5 was neutral, and 10 was full approval.

The one immediately said 7 or 8, and then the other was like, "Officially, zero," but I pressed him, and he wouldn't say, but I pressed him some more, and we went back and forth, etc., and finally he gave in and was like, "I feel bad," and then he said it was probably like a 6 -- which fact makes me think that public opinion surveys may be underestimating popular support of Luigi's targeted killing, since social desirability effects will lead at least some portion of people to say that they strongly disapprove of his actions (when actually in fact they mildly approve, or more).

A Luigi joke of several months ago...

...because one of the (presumably independent contractors) who lives nearby and does deliveries during slow periods is this (young) (African) (immigrant) guy named "Luigi," and my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones had written the groupchat for the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now this short message for record-keeping, that Luigi had come by and taken X amount of money:

Like, the next time I worked, I was like, "Oh my god oh my god oh my god, Luigi was here? Why didn't you call me?!?! I thought you were my friend! If he needed money, I would have given him money, he didn't need to take it, he could even stay with me if he needs to, I would hide him!"

. . .

(At that, everyone rolled their eyes, but I was like, "I know that they say he's a criminal, but honestly, when you met him, what was he like, did he seem nice? Tell me, I want to know.")