Two happenings on a day-trip...

to a campsite on a lake, like an hour-and-a-half away from my parents' house:

1) As I stop through a gas station in the last major town, I fill up my coffee cup and get two sausage sticks from these little plastic bins on the front counter, with tongs.

"And there's bags right there," the counter-lady tells me, pointing out these little brown paper bags for sausage sticks, sitting out on some neighboring boxes on that counter. 

And, believe it or not, the total for all of that is like $2.25, and when I tell the counter-lady that this is "the cheapest pit-stop ever," she points out that it's only a dollar to refill my coffee cup since I brought my own container, and the sausage sticks are two for a dollar twenty-five.

2) When I get to the campsite, the 64 year-old (white) (super tanned) (construction company owner/worker) (lesbian) family friend of the person who invited me is there, and besides seeing her last summer at a wedding, I haven't seen her in years, and as I walk up, the first thing she does is shake her head and say that she still can't believe that I have grey in my hair.

A response of my mother...

...when I'm at home and she asks me something in the kitchen as I'm going to fill up both my coffee cup and my glass of water, and I look and I suddenly realize that I put the coffee in my water glass, and I tell her to look at what I just did:

"Good, it's not just me doing that." 

Some recent (South Asian from South Asia) customers (2 of 2): Strategizing for some old ones.

So, this summer there's been a new batch of three (very dark) (South Asian from South Asia) customers, two (skinny) guys and one (skinny) girl, and they all come in very late at night for food together, and it's become clear that they never tip anything.

And, like the last time that someone asked them about tipping using that thing the owner taught us about "was everything okay with the meal, okay, then why no tip, the manager will see that and wonder what happened," the one guy was just like, "I don't believe in tipping."

"Don't worry, I feel that they will not come in again," my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker was like, saying that she thought that we had embarrassed them this time by challenging them like that.

But, my one (Chinese from China) coworker said that he had actually brought that up with them before, and this was the **second** time that someone had talked with them, and that they still tipped nothing, and the one guy even got explicit about it, that he would never tip anything, ever.

"And no-one wants to wait on them," he said, and he said that he finally only went over out of pity after the girl was signalling for a while to everyone that they were ready to order, and no-one was responding.

And, I don't exactly remember their faces -- my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker said that they were the ones who got takeout recently, and asked to sit and eat at the tables but we said no -- but still, I came up with some strategies.

Like, we just point to a table, and hand them the menus and tell them to sit there.

("That won't work," my one [chubby] [Thai] coworker was like, "We sit them and they get up and find a new table anyways.")

Then, when the food comes out, we just put it on the front counter and wait for them to notice it, and if they ask, say it's up there for them to get, and we also make them pay at the counter at the same time.

"If they want a restaurant where they tip like they're ordering at the counter, give them a restaurant where they order at the counter!", I was like.

 ("[First name of (husband) (Thai) restaurant owner] will be mad," she was like, in response to which I pointed out that he doesn't necessarily have to be there when we do that.)

I also suggested that we confirm when they come in next time that they're "that table" and ask them if they plan on tipping, and if they say no, tell them that they're welcome to order takeout, but if they decide to dine in, there will be an automatic 18% surcharge on the bill.

("Sounds good," said my one [Chinese from China] coworker, "But don't ask if they will tip. I wouldn't put it past them where they say that they will tip, and then they give no tip.")

Alternately alternately, I also suggested that when they want to order, we all pre-plan and avoid the table for a pre-determined length of time, like maybe 5 or even 10 minutes, and *then* we finally help them.

"If they don't tip, they don't tip, no more asking for tip," my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker was like, speaking of these situations in general. "No tip? They just give no tip. Only help them when everything else is done, only that."

For, it seems, these customers have finally worn her down, and driven all will to resist right out of her. 

Some recent (South Asian from South Asia) customers (1 of 2): Behavior of a new one.

This summer at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, there was a new group of like three (South Asian from South Asia) customers, including this (mid- to late-20s) (fat) (dumpy) ('fro-ed out) (darker skin) (Indian) guy with an incredibly (womanly) ass that just curved out in fat curves to each side of his ass as he waddled through the restaurant, curves of his ass that in fact mirrored the smaller curves of his (Desi 'fro), and he was the one who ended up paying for him and his 2 friends.

For their $55 meal, he **bypassed** the 15% - 18% - 20% tip suggestion screen on our new tableside contraption for when people pay with a smartphone tap, and instead, he left exactly nothing. 

And, unlike a credit card receipt, that new contraption does not allow anyone to go in and retroactively adjust the tip, so once they do that, there's no going back, the die is cast, permanently.

An amazing K-pop concert.

So, earlier this summer my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker traveled to see a BlackPink concert, since they're touring again after a year off to follow their own projects, even though they don't have a new album out.

"So how was it?!?, I was like, when she got back.

And, she said it was the best BlackPink concert that she's ever been to, probably because of the crowd.

Like, no one sat, and people weren't standing and swaying, but people were standing and singing and dancing the entire time, including when the group had breaks and there was like video stuff and dancers to fill the interim.

She also stayed at a hotel that was like walking distance from the concert venue, and although her mom said she should be careful and take taxis to and from the concert, especially at night on the way back home, when it was time for her to go back, she just walked, and it actually turned out to be one of the best parts of the night, because she was with just gobs of people who were all leaving the stadium at the same time and heading in the direction that she had to go, and they were all singing songs together as they walked the entire time, and it was just so much fun.

"I want to go again," she was like, saying that she looked at the other upcoming U.S. tour dates, but none will work out with her work schedule with when she needs to be at the restaurant, saddly.

"But still, I don't think it's as good, if I go again," she was like. "It was the crowd."

A theory of abusive men.

So, my one (restaurant manager) friend from my hometown has said that it seems to her that the amount of abusive and perverted men in the world is growing.

She was citing some factoid about a third of men committing rape if they could get away with it, and she also said that besides cases like Epstein's, there's cases among social circles she knows, where suddenly there's all these men who are into teenage and pre-teen girls and suddenly that comes out through stuff like dick pics and everything blows up.

(Like, a good friend of her niece's suddenly cut her off, and it finally came out that the reason she did that was that her dad had started texting dick pics to young girls at her school, and now there's an official school investigation and she just couldn't handle the shame or telling other people about it, and so she cut off contact with all of her friends.)

"Men are so gross," she was like. "Is this some trauma reaction to loss of the foreskin?"

And, in that regard, she said that babies didn't even have anesthesia during surgery until like the 1980s, so maybe the circumcision psychically scarred them in ways that we're only just now breaking out of.

 "I don't know," I was like, and I said that probably it was just some portion of men who have always been attracted to underage girls, and now with phones and stuff it's easier for them to get caught, versus the secretive and relatively evidence-free situations that they used to trap them in, like cornering the babysitter for a grope.

"Maybe," she was like.

She also said that media was pushing more and more men into liking young girls, though, and that she thinks that just like a lot of straight women have gay male friends, she thinks that a lot of straight men need lesbian friends in their lives, to balance things out and make them more normal.

Poltical shockwaves:

1) A (restaurant manager) friend of mine from my hometown has said that she feels like life is messed up and useless, and while her mother claims she's depressed, she's experienced depression, and she said it's not that, it's just that the world is so messed up right now, beyond anything that we could have anticipated like ten years ago.

"You need to stop watching national news," I was like, and I gave her advice about first identifying when and how she consumes new -- in the morning and before bed, through news apps and on TikTok alongside recipe stuff -- and then finding a replacement activity -- like reading cult memoirs.

"Oh my god, that sounds like so much fun," she was like, just thinking about reading the cult memoirs.

(Earlier, we had been talking about NXIVM, which she knew about from podcasts and which I knew about from books, and she had started wanting the names of the books I was reading, which gave me that idea.) 

2)  When I was back in my hometown standing in line outside at the window of a local ice-cream parlor with my mother, I started looking at all of the (middle-to-lower class) (white) customers, and I started thinking about how many of them voted for or support the current president, and I just couldn't stand to even look at them anymore, and I had to turn my eyes away and look at something else.

It didn't used to be like that, with people who voted for (Republicans).

He's just that divisive.