Saint Patrick's Day this year...

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

1) There's a gigantic reservation for a student-faculty sustainability group.

"Green energy?", I'm like, "How about green beer!", as I tell some of the first students to arrive, that they should pregame on university dime.

2) I tell several sets of customers that we should have had a special of like a dollar off green curry, and then I say that maybe we even should have had like a green curry with potato and cabbage and corned beef -- "I'd try it," says one customer, which surprises me, since it sounds nasty -- and then I also say that we could do cabbage satay or maybe a potato satay, and people in general think that potato satay maybe could be good.

At some point, too, I also say that we should dye the sake green.

3) I tell my (Thai) coworkers that we should have planned ahead, and our one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones should have dressed up like a leprechaun with a big fake red beard and a big green sparkly hat.

4) My (Guatemalan) coworkers have never heard of St. Patrick's Day, even when I Google how to say his name in (Spanish) -- San Patricio -- and my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker is just confused about the holiday and she keeps asking what it's about, and when I tell her nothing, it's just a holiday associated with the (Irish) that's an excuse to drink, she's just confused, and she keeps saying it must be about something.

"No," I'm like, "It's like my mother says, it's just an excuse to drink."

A Sunday afternoon shift a few months ago...

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

1) When a rack of glasses comes out dirty again, like has been happening sometimes lately, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker is a little frustrated and is like arggghhhhh and so I ask her what's up, and she starts going off about one of the (Guatemalan) kitchen workers and she's like, "I tell him the glasses are dirty, and he says, he does not wash the glasses, the machine washes."

"Well," I was like, "He's not wrong."

2) This one (slightly nerdy) (affable) (mid-40s)(white) couple who are regular customers who always come in later at night come in, only my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker is surprised and is like, "I thought they are dating, but no, they are married, with kids!", since this time it wasn't just the two of them, but they had three middle school-age children along with them, in addition to several guests, which made my coworker realize that all this time it wasn't dating per se that was happening with them when they were coming in, but rather a "date night" thing where they must have been getting a babysitter in order to come in together to enjoy a meal with just the two of them.

 And, she told them that at the table, and they all laughed, and they also told us that they had another son who wasn't with them, but who was at a Rubik's Cube competition along with the kid of one of their guests who was there at the table with them, since they had come into town for that and were staying with them.

"No way," I was like. "And what's your son's record?"

And, the dad said something about how he does a three-by-three in like seven seconds.

"Man alive," I was like, "That's really cool, but it also doesn't make me feel so good about myself to hear that, that is just not good for my self-esteem." 

"Yep!", he was like, laughing. "Me neither."

I also was recommending this one new business in town to them, and that got me started talking about a really good (Vietnamese) restaurant in town, and they hadn't been there, but then the husband and wife started saying that it's funny that I mentioned that, because they actually met twenty years ago, and their very first date was for Vietnamese coffee.

So, I told them that they should definitely try out that (Vietnamese) restaurant, the food is so good, but they might want to be careful with what they order.

"A rare side effect of Vietnamese coffee is having four children over twenty years," I was like. "So, you guys better be careful, if you get another one of those, you might end up with eight."

 And, that greatly delighted them.

After they left, then, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker was cleaning the table, and she comes over to me and is like, "Guess how much they tip, close your eyes," and I don't want to, but she insists, so I finally close my eyes, and then she puts a bill into my hand, and I open them up and unroll it -- and, they had left a $100 cash tip, on their like $140 bill that already had an automatic gratuity added in for their large party.

So, that day ended up being the single most profitable day I ever worked at the restaurant, clearing over $40 an hour between tips and base wage, for that simple four-hour shift that I had worked.

It was even better money than at graduation-time.

Three recent sets of (South Asian) customers...

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

1) Four (South Asian-American) (STEM bro) (undergraduate) guys who call each other "man" a lot come in a little on the late side for a late-night dinner, and, among other subjects, they discuss research areas in aeronautical engineering.

"Turbulence is sick," one observes very heartily, to the others.

(All tip normally, except for one who leaves only a dollar for his meal -- bad influence from his [presumably immigrant] parents that he has not yet outgrown, I would think.)

2) A table of four (college-age) students includes two (young) (princess-y) (South Asian from South Asia) women, and one bespectacled (Indonesian?) (Muslim) woman in a headscarf, and a (young) (curly blonde-haired) (white) woman, and they all split a meal together, ordering like three entrees for the four of them. When it is time to offer boxes for leftovers, too, there is only the smallest bit of rice left, and only the smallest bit of curry, and one of the (young) (princess-y) (South Asian from South Asia) women wants separate boxes for each of those two things, and then, after the boxes are brought out, she requests a fresh spoon for the rice, since there is only one spoon left on the table, in the curry bowl, and presumably she does not want to touch the rice with that spoon that has a little bit of curry sauce on it, when she packs it up to-go.

(I tell this to my one [newer] [taller] [Thai] coworker, and she just rolls her eyes. The tip is exactly 15%, to the penny -- a surprise, considering that one of the [princess-y] women paid.)

3) A(n early 50s) (South Asian from South Asia) man with big crazy eyes and stocks of hair slicked haphazardly across his half-bald pate is in with a (fatter) (bald) (more placid) (later 60s) (South Asian from South Asia) man, and, from the moment he sits down, he keeps saying that he can eat no meat, and finally when I ask to clarify, he says that eggs and fish and shrimp are okay.

And, he is always waving me over, and like I always do when anyone requests something, before I leave the table, I'm like, "And is there anything else that you need right now besides that?", and the first time I do that, as I walk away from the table, he says quite loudly to his dining companion, "See, he's a professional."

Towards the end of the meal, too, he takes a phone call, there, and his voice thunders through the mostly-empty restaurant. 

Also, when it is time to leave and they request to-go boxes, I bring them over to the table, and he is like, "And now you can pack that up," and I have to say something politely about how that's something that we leave for the customers themselves to do.

(The tip is like $5 on a forty-some dollar bill -- not bad, considering that a bit of chicken had shown up in his tom kha soup with shrimp, and he needed a replacement cup for himself.)

Some recent interactions with some (Guatemalan) coworkers...

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

1) The one (Guatemalan) kitchen guy who's learning (English) with Duolingo is seeming to have fun with it.

Like, he was trying to recreate in (English) some of my (Spanish) phrasings, and was like, "Happy afternoon!" to me, when I came into work one day.

I also was going through the hallway holding my staff meal at the end of the shift one night, and he pointed to the container and was like, "For me?".

2) One night at the restaurant when we were closing, I was bringing the soup tin back to the dishwashing area as part of my close-of-shift duties, and I was doing my schtick about "Senora Sopa" where I'm always like, "Quien viene, quien viene, la Senora Sopa viene!" ("Who's coming, who's coming, Mrs. Soup is coming!"), only this time, I was like, "Quien viene, quien viene,.." ("Who's coming, who's coming..."), and that one (Guatemalan) kitchen guy who's learning (English) with Duolingo was like, "La Senora!" ("The Mrs.!"), and I was like, "Cual Senora?" ("Which Mrs.?"), and at that he just looks at me, and with a laugh, is like, "TU" ("YOU").

3) After I had those flea bites on my left arm from the recent hatch, I had scratched the top layer of skin off to stop the itching, and then I had to cover the unsightly scratches and scabs on my arm with band-aids, for work.

And, as soon as they saw that, all the (Guatemalan) kitchen staff pointed to that, and asked me what happened.

"Un hombre me llamo Senora, y luchamos," I was like. "Y ahorita es muerte. " ("A man called me 'Senora,' and we fought. And now he is dead").

Some recent-ish customer interactions...

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

1) When I say "okeedokee" like I always do to verbally confirm that I hear a customer's order, one (older) (white) man seems quite amused by that and is like, "It's nice to hear 'okeedokee' at a Thai restaurant," and then a little while later that same night, one (later middle-aged) (professional) (white) woman at a table of such women who drink wine, she hears that, and then immediately she asks me if I'm from Minnesota.

2) At one table of mostly (prospective) (STEM) graduate students, a (STEM) graduate student who's a regular customer is in with them and eats his plate exceptionally clean, so when I go to clear it, I point to several spots of oil still on there, and I say that he missed them, and is he really done yet. Sort of similarly, that same night a three-top orders one bowl of coconut ice cream and we bring out some extra bowls for them to split it, and when I get back, I cluck my tongue at the one (older) (white) woman who has the main bowl, and I'm like, "Uh oh, did the divider take the most ice cream for themself, is that what I see happening here...?", just to mess with them a little bit, in a kind fashion.

A coworker's garden.

At the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones has been getting into gardening for like the past year-and-a-half, and she made sure during the last season to put in some different stuff for spring growth.

Only, her daffodils and tulips and whatnot weren't coming up when everyone else's were, earlier this spring.

"You have a problem," I was like. "Your daffodils are either lazy, or dead."

I also said that the next time I went out for a jog, I'd go by her house and stand there and yell at them, and say stuff like, "Why are you doing this?!  You are giving [her first name] a bad reputation in the neighborhood! Her Christmas lights were so nice this year, but what is happening now?! You are embarrassing her!!!".

And, she said that maybe something ate them.

Like a week after that, though, sprouts finally finally started coming up, in the areas where she had planted.

So, for that shift and the next, whenever she'd be around and I'd see another front-of-the-house coworker, I'd be like, shhhhhh, shhhhhhhh, and then I'd be like, "Can you hear that?", and after they paused and listened for a bit and then were like, "What?", I'd be like, "You can hear [her first name]'s garden growing."

I also then told her that this was a sign of a highly successful garden, if we could hear everything growing from over such a distance.

"Sure," she was like.

Two rare mishaps, in one week:

1) After a turgid night of thinking at a local bar about the one ancient language that I've been studying for the past number of years now and have made myself into quite the expert in, I get home a little bit tipsy -- over the course of like two hours of flipping through a text and a dictionary, I had pushed forward to some major new tentative hypotheses, and I then had a couple of whiskeys both to calm down and to celebrate -- and so, after all of that, I come home and I have some ramen noodles and crash, and then I wake up in the middle of the night and I feel dehydrated, but, when I stagger out into my living room to take a swig from my water bottle that sits out on my kitchen table, I accidentally go in for it wrong in the dark, and I knock it and it falls over and it dumps some water onto a pile of papers on my kitchen table, before I can pick it up again and set it aright.

2) A few mornings later, I'm standing by my kitchen table and I go to pick up my uniquely-sculpted coffee cup that I had bought from a local artisan, but, since I'm standing up and not sitting down like when I usually handle it, I go in for it wrong and I knock it and it tips over onto its beveled edge and so it gets destabilized and then it careens over and dumps coffee onto that same pile of papers there, again.