Observation of a local bus driver...

...when I’m on the way back from a trip to the mall for new workpants and workshoes and we stop at the local transit center and the bus driver rouses a (late middle-aged) (black) man who is slumped over on the front seats and makes him get off the bus:

This has really been happening the past two years, he says, especially when it gets colder out and at the end of the lines, because you have people boarding the busses and staying on them to rest and sleep and get warm, it’s really been something that’s been happening the last two years, he thinks.

A lazy evening at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now.

The entire evening I do nothing but graze – some spicy pork and tomato dish over rice that a cook made up and I tried a small bowl of, and then a lot of gummies and also a big bowl of edamame that a table ordered as an appetizer and then practically never touched – and so I just feel stuffed and lazy and don’t even want to order any food to go for my shift-meal, and then when it’s time to cut down staff, my one (older) (Thai) coworker who’s a whiz at the phones is folding silverware, and I’m being amicable because I don’t really need to be the one to leave, so I’m like, “I can stay,” at which my one (older) (Thai) coworker who’s a whiz at the phones is just like bluntly, “No,” and then she smiles devilishly.

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

1) After a big college football game where the local university lost, a group of people with opposing t-shirts come in and sit together, and I’m like, “Hey, no gloating [opposing team name] here!”, and towards the end of the meal when they don’t want dessert, I turn to the opposing team guy and am like, “Hey, what, no dessert to celebrate?!?!”

Later, too, when I’m on my break and having a cold brew coffee at a local patio, a guy with an opposing t-shirt goes right by me to go to walk in, and I call after him, “Hey, no [opposing team name] here!”, at which he laughs, and then for some reason he’s back out of the door a few minutes later, and as he comes out he turns to me and mugs this dramatic face and is like, “They kicked me out!!”

2) A big group of people come to order but ask about quick stuff, and when I ask them, it turns out they’re playing a nearby music bar and their cover band event had actually caught my eye, and so I pull out my smartphone and show them a picture of me with some serious rock and roll memorabilia of the group they cover, and they say that I should come by, but I say that I work too late and I could only come over for the very last part and it isn’t worth the money to get in, and when they hear that, they’re like, “We can put you on the list.”

So, I tell them my name, and, they do!

(It was kind of awesome.)

Also, they were waiting for one band member for a while, and I was like, “He has to be the drummer,” which made them laugh, since it wasn’t the drummer, the drummer was already there, but it totally is a thing that a drummer would do.

The calm and quick response of the one (gay) (Brazilian) (STEM) post-doc who I know from around town…

…when he approvingly mentions his visit to this one (horrible) (yuppie-ish) (gay) neighborhood in the city that I used to live in, and I’m like, “Why do you like that place? It’s where old gays go to die”:

“I know, that’s why I like it, I need money.”

Stories of my mailman, about the (Amish).

My one (West African) mailman goes decently frequently to the one (Amish) town with the one restaurant that I went to with two (Brazilians), and when I had told him that we went to that restaurant, he was saying that we should have gone during the day to do shopping there around town and at local farms nearby.

And, he also was saying that you see things like you wouldn’t believe, like one time he saw Amish roadrage, where this young guy was going slow in a buggy and this older guy came out in his buggy and passed him on the left, and he started cursing him out and being like “I know your father” and “I’ll kick your ass” and saying all sorts of swear-words like you wouldn’t believe, and he went to go get his phone and record it because it’s one of those things that you wouldn’t believe if you didn’t see it yourself, but his wife reached out and stopped him from doing it.

He also says you can get good cheese for popcorn there, and once he got a huge thing of ribs, and it was so much cheaper for those ribs than anywhere else you could get locally, like for $65 or $75 dollars versus three hundred, or something ridiculous like that, and the quality is great, too.

Deceptive customer.

A while ago at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, a (lady) on the phone calls up and wants to place a to-go order for a few items, and she requests this one specific fried rice with chicken and shrimp in it and like a tom yum soup mix mixed in as flavoring, but she wants to know if it’s spicy – it isn’t, I explain, just a little bit, but nothing too crazy – and also she then wants the sauce on the side, which I then say I don’t think is possible but I can check, and then she says no, it's okay, you can mix it in.

Then, this (like early 60s) (non-descript) (white) woman shows up, and she opens up the food to look at it when we bring the take-out out, and when we go to ring her up, the price catches her attention, and she suddenly starts asking don’t we sell side orders – we don’t – and then she’s like, “Uh, this rice is too spicy, I told the person who ordered not to order anything spicy for me, but they must have made a mistake…”

At this point, the (Thai) (female) owner with the tired face has happened to step outside towards by us for something else, and everything catches her attention and she talks through the woman’s concerns and she directs her to a standard chicken fried rice for a lesser price, so she orders that instead for her and voids the other fried rice order, and then after she leaves, she starts telling me to move people to that, if they have a concern about spice.

“But she didn’t,” I was like, “She was lying.”

And, I explained that she was the person who ordered over the phone, I recognized her voice, but she must not have liked the price and so she lied in order to make something up and get out of paying for the order.

My one (chubby) (Thai) coworker was in and out for bits of this, and she later said that I should always say the price at the end of the order, which I agreed with, but I said there were so many clarifications and special requests that I forgot to do it, and besides the difference was just like $2-3 with what she ultimately ended up paying.

“And besides, she has a menu in front of her when she placed the order because she was asking me very specific questions over the phone, how was I supposed to know that she wasn’t looking over at the price for the items that she was asking about?”

“Cheap Chinese food,” my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker was like, solemnly. “She expect cheap Chinese food, and the price surprise her.”

A local homeless man…

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

As I go to lock up the patio furniture, a (middle-aged) (black) homeless guy with a prominent bald spot is sitting on a ledge of the next storefront over, and he’s sitting there still but also moving funny and tottering a bit, and while I’m out there he slumps off the ledge and lands on the concrete, where he tries to push himself up and his arms and legs are all sticking out like a crab’s and he’s heaving himself up trying to get his body off the pavement, but he can’t, and his arms and legs give under, and he just lies there, until he rolls over on one side and opens his zipper and takes out his dick andd starts peeing right there, the urine hitting the sidewalk beside him and following the slight incline downwards in parallel to how his body is lying.

I then go inside and call the police and inform them of the situation but specify that they shouldn’t send police, but like a social worker or something – “We don’t have that,” the person on 911 responds, when I mention it a second time – and then after I hang up, our one (dramatic) (white) (female) (townie) delivery driver says that she has seen that guy sitting out there all night, and finally when the cops come, one comes into the restaurant afterwards for some food, and he says that the guy is from the adjoining sister city and was super drunk, and there was no way he could have made it home that night, so it was good that we called, because now they’re taking him to a hospital where he can sleep it off.

When I go outside later, too, there’s like two plastic flasks of whiskey on the ground, but oddly no real visible urine marks, although the weather is on the cold side and there was no way it could have dried up that fast.