Like a week or two before Christmas this year at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, we got totally slammed on a weekday night when it was just 3 of us working, from the moment we walked in.
And, I had picked up some specialty chocolate on sale at the local co-op and I had brought it in as a treat for everyone, and it wasn’t until like more than 3 hours into the shift that I even had a chance to open it, it was that busy… In fact, it was so late by the time that we opened it, I wondered if we’d even have time to eat it all, since there was still some left on the plate that I had set out for the kitchen workers by the time that we starting to do our end-of-shift tasks for closing.
(“Don’t worry,” the one [older] [Thai] cook lady was like, when I pointed that out, meaning that she’d take anything that was left.)
And, even though it was busy, I was having a good time and chit-chatting with customers, like a table full of professors who were there for a business meal and who I was trying to convince to get dessert.
“What, no fried banana on the [name of the local university]?”, I was like.
But then, it wasn’t until after the rush that I found out that we actually had had two different orders stolen by two different app delivery drivers, including one by a guy who was shamelessly doing it right in front of me.
One was some UberEats guy who was waiting an incredibly long time for his order because the kitchen was so backed up, and when he finally got it, he canceled the pick-up from his end and walked out and kept it, and it wasn’t until some other UberEats driver showed up and wanted the same order that we realized what had happened.
The other one was a lot more insidious, this one (mid 30s) (dark-skinned black) (male) Doordash driver who I had seen sitting around waiting, and who when I came back to the counter was carrying a big take-out bag and asked me for a fork and napkin and so I ran behind the counter and got him one…
As we pieced it together later, when he first came in, he walked past the edge of the counter to the unpaid orders that customers place over the phone, and he was looking at that ticket when my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker saw him doing that and was like “No, go sit down, that’s not your order.”
And, he waited and got all three of his Doordash orders, walked them out to the car as we confirmed them gone, and then he came back in and waited some more, until we were all busy and no-one was by the front counter, at which point he walked over and picked up the huge order whose ticket he had looked at – it was an expensive one, too, with stuff like seafood fried rice – and then he just stood there like it was his, and when I ran by he even asked me for a fork so he’d have something to eat it with, since I’d never have imagined that he took the order like that, it only briefly crossed my mind that maybe he was being too weird and conscientious about the app order, every once in a while we get app delivery drivers like that, but I immediately thought that maybe he could just be a customer who had been waiting for his own order, too, and so rather than checking if a fork was in the bag, I immediately ran behind the counter and got him one since that was quicker and I needed to be onto the next task.
We immediately blocked him as a driver afterwards – Doordash lets you do that, although I don’t think UberEats does – and my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker said we should maybe even put a photo of him on the front door saying he stole, just like they do at H-Mart.
“But then I would have to put a picture of you on the front door,” I was like. “SHE STOLE MY HEART.”
Later, too, at the end of the night, I gave her like five dollars in quarters for her laundry and she gave me a five dollar bill, and I asked her why she didn’t count the quarters that I gave her, to make sure that it was really five dollars.
“Because I trust you,” she was like.
“We trusted the Doordash driver, too,” I was like.
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