An early May dinner shift...

...at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, like in the first half of May:

1) The weather is nice and the patio is open and the shift is very slow to start, but it's backloaded with many customers coming in at the end like at eight and nine o'clock at night, just like any summer shift where people are out doing other things than eating at a restaurant while the sun is up and the temperature is nice, but then once the sun goes down, then they start coming in.

2) A seven-top family of (South Asian from South Asia) customers and a (daughter's boyfriend) come in, the family being (Indian) but the (boyfriend) probably (Pakistani) or (Bangladeshi) because he orders fish cakes as an appetizer and then duck curry for his own personal entree, and the (mother) speaks with him a lot about classes and career as it's just her and him and the daughter as they wait for the rest of the family to arrive.

And, it's just after the slow period, too, so I'm standing at the host stand studying an ancient language with homemade flashcards, and my one (Chinese from China) coworker drops by and is like, "Go check on them, they are staring at you," and although I had been noticing out of the corner of my eye that they were all still reading menus, it turns out that the dad at the faraway corner of the table at the very very edge of my peripheral vision had begun looking at me, and so I went over to go check on them.

And, the newly-arrived grandma wants a coffee, and like I always do after every customer interaction, I double-check if anything else is needed right then, and they put in one more drink order and an appetizer order, and then, quite weirdly, they start putting in several of the entree orders, but leisurely negotiating others, and they do this once or twice, before I'm like, "It sounds like you need more time selecting entrees, so, if you want, I can go put this appetizer and beverage order in," to which they readily agree, and overall that interaction just leaves me feeling confused, because, it's like the dad wanted me there right then to get the grandmother a coffee, but then, somehow, that immediate want dissipated and they had me stand around for other less-necessary stuff while she was still there without her coffee.

And, as the dad ordered coffee for the grandma, he did so without looking at the menu -- "Do you have coffee?", he was like -- and, he also asked for it to be made with milk (like a latte?), which we don't have and don't offer, and when I said we don't have milk but we could bring out half-and-half to add to the black coffee, he said no, black coffee is fine, only for us to bring out the coffee and then suddenly they need half-and-half.

And, before entrees were served, I had asked how many people were sharing so I could bring out plates so they could eat family-style, and the dad said four, and then, after entrees are served, at that point they request another plate, and then five minutes after that, they request a sixth plate for the little girl who's been there all along and who I assume was going to eat off an appetizer plate or had already eaten kid food somewhere, and when I asked much like I always do "Is there anything else that anyone needs right now beside another plate?", the dad just gave me this look, like I was out of place to double-check their wants like that and passive-aggressively say "another plate," instead of just immediately running around and doing whatever they asked.

And, I didn't push it since we weren't too busy yet, but really, it's a reasonable expectation that someone can count how many people are sharing among a group of seven and give you a correct number, and sure, maybe one person later joins in, but two extra trips for that is just too many, it's like, c'mon, have your shit together, people, there's more people in the world than just you.

(Because they were a party of 6 or larger, there was an automatic 18% gratuity, and I did not check to see if anything was added on top of that.)

3) When the cook made a mistake and made a pad thai variant with the wrong noodle-type, I wasn't paying attention and just took it to go serve it, and my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker happened to be standing there and was like, "Look at you, what are you doing?!" and pointed to the noodle type, and so I immediately told her that her new haircut was too sexy and was distracting me at my job, and I immediately translated versions of that for my (Guatemalan) coworkers who were standing there, like, "Aiaiaiaiai, no puedo trabajar, miro siempre su nuevo estilo, no miro los platos y que se cocina" and "Su nuevo estilo es peligroso (which is something like, "Ayayay, I can't work, I always look at her new style, I don't look at the dishes and what is being cooked," and, "Her new style is dangerous").

And, they enjoyed those remarks, especially since everyone had been complimenting her on her new hairstyle all that shift -- it really is quite nice! -- and, one (male) (Guatemalan) guy had even told her that with it she was "guapa" ('cute').

After work, too, everyone else had cleared out, and she asked me to stay and then leave with her so she wasn't alone leaving the restaurant, and after we got out the door, I walked her to her nearby rentable electric scooter, and she said that I didn't have to do that, but I said that I had to, I'm her bodyguard, with her new haircut, random men were going to start following her, and she should be more careful when she's out by herself.

Further back-story of a death.

When that one customer at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now told my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker that his wife passed, she later told me that he actually first said "No more, [his wife's first name] is no more," as the very first thing that he said after she had said that it was nice to see him again.

She also said that months and months before that, she had seen the wife in a different part of the college town when she was out on her rentable electric scooter, so she pulled over and said hello since she hadn't seen her in a while, and she said that they weren't coming into the restaurant as much because they needed to save money, but "everything is okay."

And, they lived with their mom, who also had cancer.

And, she passed earlier, and the wife's cancer had been under control, but after that it exploded.

"I think she died because the mom died and she sad," my one coworker was like.

She also said that they sent her a Christmas card of all the people who work at the restaurant, probably because she was the only one who really went out of her way to help them, because they were bad tippers.

I also said that when they hadn't come in in a while, and after I saw him alone out around town, I had just thought that they got divorced or something, and my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker said that that had been the assumption, too, of my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones.

But, no, the wife was sick with cancer, and then the mom died, and now she is dead.

Insight into (Thai) culture.

A few months ago when I was hanging out socially with my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker, she was telling me how she had recently caught up with a college friend of hers, and before that they hadn't been talking for a while as much as they usually do, and so she called her up and leveled with her and was like, "Is something happening? Something seems to be happening and you can tell me anything," and her friend basically said that she and her boyfriend of 12 years had broken up, since he wanted her to get out of her government job and take a new and better-paying job, but she wanted to stay in her current government job, because in (Thailand) that gets certain benefits for your family like for her aging parents.

And, I immediately remarked that that was very odd, for a boyfriend to want to dictate someone's job choice like that.

And, she immediately disagreed, and said it was a (Chinese Thai) thing, since (Chinese Thai) tend to be "very traditional," and, it was a family business and he worked in it and he was the oldest son, so there was just this expectation that he would give direction within the larger family and within that relationship unit.

Like, that was the cultural context.

Dangerous bus re-route.

Because of construction like two-and-a-half blocks north of where I live, a bus route that usually goes through there is temporarily re-routed and swings down and goes for a bit on the one major street near me to avoid that impassable construction section, and then after a bit cuts back through a more-residential street to re-join its usual route.

And, while all this was happening, I'm walking home from work, and as I get to the intersection, I see a bus on the opposite side of the major street, and I process it as a regular bus that will continue onward on that major street, but it's actually a re-routed bus, so I look down to check the text messages on my phone and I go to go across the residential street, only for the re-routed bus to start up and start swinging a lefthand turn towards where I was walking, since it's the shortcut it needs to take to get back onto its typical route.

And, of course I saw it and stopped, and of course the driver saw me, but still, it was jarring. 

You just don't expect a huge city bus on that small residential street, and so you have different safety practices there and you just walk across that intersection blithely.

Usually I walk diagonally across the untrafficked street there, too, on my way to work, and around that same time I realized I was lollygagging down the middle of the street as this big bus was starting to come right through there.

I mean, too, this has been my route for several years now, you just don't expect a big change like that, and it's hard to adjust your routine.

Boyfriend problems.

So, when I ran into the one (gay) (Colombian) (grad student) who I know from around town a few months ago, even though it had been a while since last summer, I finally remembered to ask him how his summer internship in a big city on the East Coast went.

(We didn't catch up immediately after he got back, and the next few times that I saw him after that, we talked about other things, and I always kept forgetting to ask him how all that went.)

So, when I finally did ask, he said that it ended up turning out well for him... The place where he lived was in a (very black) and (poorer) neighborhood, which he hadn't realized when subletting, and though he was a bit shocked at first when he got there, like he was afraid people would break in and steal all his stuff, he eventually realized that it was all just internalized racism, and the situation actually ended up being quite good, and now looking back he wouldn't change a thing about it.

And, since his one (gay) (Brazilian) boyfriend is a professor, he basically isn't tied down during the summer and he picked up stakes and came and joined him, along with the dog that he has, a whippet.

And, I guess that was a problem, but that too ended up turning out all right, and now he has fallen in love with the dog...

As he described it, the dog is kind and eager and sweet but it's also a pretty nervous little thing, like a lot of times it starts walking towards you after it begins peeing and it also can start walking when it shits, and so the pee gets on its feet and the shit kind of moves around its rear end, which grosses you out, "But the dog doesn't know any better," he was like.

And, at some point he added in the detail that his boyfriend always has the dog sleep in bed with him, but he doesn't ever really clean it before it gets in bed, and sometimes it has dirt on it, too.

But, when his boyfriend had to go to (Brazil) to be with family because of a sick family member, suddenly he was left alone with the dog, since although he first wanted to kennel it, he decided that that was an uncharitable response on his part as a boyfriend, and he could take care of it.

And, slowly, over the course of a month, the dog grew on him, with its sweetness and trustingness.

And, he also got some wet wipes and would wipe down the dog every time it came in the house, and he also bought some dog perfume too, to spray it down every evening.

 Then, his boyfriend gets back, and first he sees how much both of them get along, and then he sees the wet wipes and dog perfume and is like, "What's that?", and then the one (gay) (Colombian) (grad student) who I know from around town is like, "Oh, I bought those when you were gone, and this is what we do now."

And, it is, and now the situation with his boyfriend's dog is just much, much better.

. . .

(I told this story to the one [lesbian] sister of my one [former assisted living client] with [disabilities], and when I got to the part about the dog being dirty and having shit and piss on its feet and the boyfriend having it sleep uncleaned in the same bed, you should have seen the look on her face. When I began the story, she said something about relationship dog drama, but I don't think she quite expected that level of underlying problem.)

Two recent reflections on popular writing in major venues:

1) When my one (art school) colleague who wears (women's clothes) and I were trading yet another online article back and forth by text about a pop culture figure who we discuss -- this time, he had sent an article to me -- I read it, and I couldn't believe how shoddy it was. Major major venue of a "BIG THINK" publication, and a staff writer, but it was just a viewpoint re-hashed from social media without any real alteration of "the take" or even engaging with any real basics of the artistic output that they were supposedly discussing. Just lazy lazy lazy, and interpretatively unjustifiable in some very basic regards, to boot. Like, you don't have to like or praise a cultural object, but at least engage it and acknowledge what it's obviously trying to do, yo.

And, when I said as much to him by text, he agreed, and then he said that nowadays what he thinks has been happening is that as publications decay and fewer things are published and fewer people have access to them as writers, what gets published a lot of times is stuff that's chasing what's already been said on social media without any real critical evaluation or added content.

Like, the publications are just following and repeating what social media is already saying, and not breaking any new ground or saying anything different.

2) Two (young) (white) (college-educated) (female) (vegan) customers at the restaurant and I were talking about articles like that, and the one said that in her experience, stuff in major publications is just not that interesting nowadays, and the better stuff is always on Substack.

Addendum.

If someone ever tells me that they still don't want to tip even when challenged, and says something about not having the money, I'd really have to bite my tongue, not to say something like, "Well, then you should go do self-service at McDonald's."

Especially if they ordered a big meal that's on the expensive side.