A weekend shift a few months ago…

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

1) My one (chubby) (Thai) coworker brings in a bunch of prepackaged (Japanese) pastries called “Tokyo banana,” and I’m like, “That sounds like a Japanese sex toy,” at which when I say it she gives me ‘a look,’ though not unfondly.

2) When I get on dinner shift, there’s this huge sheen up on the wood floorboards towards the front of the restaurant, and my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker says that a (South Asian from South Asia) family sat there and their kid was in a high chair, and the kid spilled water and also ice cream all over the floor, and that’s what’s still left there after she tried to clean it all up right after they left.

And, it was like a $70 or $80 bill, and they tipped like $6.50.

3) Since it was slower, I got a wet rag and went to try mopping up more of the sticky stuff again – you could actually feel it on the soles of your shoes when you walked, and as you moved off it your soles left a few footprints of the sticky stuff beyond the patch of it that you had just crossed through – and as I was squatting down and wiping away, suddenly I heard this rip, and my workpants had split down the middle.

“So much work,” my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker was like, about the residual mess from that family's child.

“Yes,” I was like, “We should have charged them automatic 18%, and an addition forty dollars for my ripped pants.”

4) When I tell my one (Guatemalan) coworker who we started the diablo joke about that I heard that they’re doing some inaugural native language classes for his native language at the local university, he said that he had already heard about it through his wife, who had heard about it at church.

Some customers the day of the local Pride parade…

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

1) Two (like almost high school age) (white) girls come in and we sit them at a table at the back, and then when we’re off doing other stuff one just goes up to the service station and helps herself to a small styrofoam takeout box, and that’s on their table forever and they have glitter makeup stuff spread all across the table and some water and makeup stuff at the bottom of that Styrofoam box, and they have their own chairs and the unused chairs pulled out wide so it interferes with seating at the adjacent table, and at one point they even put dirty dishes on one of the adjacent tables, and when I go to reckon up with them they say yes they’re ready for the check, and then when I go to the back counter and get it and bring it up, at that point they tell me that they want to separate the bill out into two checks, and ultimately they tip less than you’re supposed to, to boot.

(For all that chaos… People would never behave like that so blithely, at a [non-Asian] restaurant.)

. . . 

2) A (quiet) (awkward) (Asian) (male-to-female trans) person who probably studies (STEM) comes in to eat by themself, and at one point they’re just kind of aimlessly wandering up the center of the restaurant with no clear purpose – looking for the restrooms? needing assistance? – and so as I walk towards them, I don't think and I’m like, “Can I help you, Sir?”

(Oops.)

. . . 

3) Two (older) (white) lesbians come in and are sitting at a corner table and for one of them I keep refilling her water glass for ever and ever, and at one point when I refill it again, she comments, “I just don’t know why I’m drinking so much water today,” to which I’m like, “Ecstasy?”, and, “You probably shouldn’t be rolling in the middle of the afternoon.”

Later, too, they have some discount coupon to pay that I’ve misfiled before, and so I tell them to wait until my coworker is back and can ring them up at the front if they bring it up there, and as soon as I say that, the one is well-meaning but a bit presumptuous and is like, “I can help you on the screen,” and she explains that she can walk me through it.

(Actually, it’s a recording system we have, because in addition to having to scan the proper coupon, you have to mark down numbers and make sure it’s the active coupon rather than an old one that's pulled up in the same on-screen list, because the sh*tty website doesn’t make that clear, and sometimes you only see old coupons or you finally locate an active coupon and scan it but then it disappears and you can’t tell which number coupon you scanned, it’s all very confusing.)

Addendum.

On one of those last trips to the farmers market like in later October, I was walking towards the market and I was passing some outdoor seating at a small breakfast café place, when I started sneezing like I do and I just couldn’t stop sneezing and sneezing and sneezing like happens with me sometimes, where it’s one sneeze that starts and then the feeling lingers in your nose and then it grows into another one and it repeats like that over and over and over.

And, this one (tall) (late 40s) (lanky) (bearded) (black) man is sitting at a table there with a (black) woman (his girlfriend?), and as I pass by and sneeze and then sneeze again, he calls out to me affably, “Get ‘em all out!”.

Farmers market find…

…at the last few farmers markets of the year this year:

Big pear-yellow knobby things that were more shaped like large apples and that had a very robust sweet smell, that turned out to be quince.

. . .

The one (grey-haired) (pulled-back ponytail) woman at the stand said that she had planted the trees fifteen years ago, and this is the first year that she finally got fruit from them.

“Like quince jelly?”, I was like, and she was like, “Yeah.”

They’re much too hard and sour to eat raw, too, she said, so you have to boil them or bake them or put them in jams, like recently she tried baking them like baked apples and they were pretty good, she said.

. . .

(I got them over two successive weeks, and I tried baking them in different variations like in a honey syrup or in thin slices and then adding honey at the bottom of the bowl when I pulled them out to eat them. I'm not in love, but they weren't bad, they were more interesting than anything else...)

Intuition of character.

A while back when it came out that Luigi Mangione got in a fight with some Thai ladyboys, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker texted me right away, and then the next time that I was at work with him, I asked my one (taller) (younger) (Latino-American) coworker if he had heard that news.

“Oh yeah!”, he was like, “Actually I had!”.

Then, I was like, “Now you, you’re Luigi adjacent, but you’re too respectful, you wouldn’t go getting into fights with Thai ladyboys,” and as soon as I said that, he started laughing, and he was like, “You’re right.”

Then, I was like, “You’d be like, ‘Hey ladies, calm down, calm down, you’re lovely women, you’re really lovely, why can’t we be peaceful with each other?’”

And then, I added, “You’re much too respectful of people and other cultures, to get in a fight with Thai ladyboys.”

And, he agreed.

A dream of discomfort.

The other month I dreamnt –-

I’m in a large sterile corporate lobby with just a big grey desk on industrial carpet, and a (young) (black) woman is standing behind it and going with me through the contract returning my rental car, and it’s on two different sheets of paper splayed across a manila folder, and I carefully look through all of the boxes denoting the different very specific parts of the car, to make sure that they’re all marked as undamaged, and as I look through everything and double-check with her that there was indeed no damage marked on my car when I returned it, I notice that on the right there’s a column where she has checked different aspects of her own experience with me as a customer, and under the box marked “Customer Conversations” there’s a tick-mark indicating that her experience was “Oppressive,” and right away I know that all of my neurotic questions to make sure that I didn’t get charged for car damage were a very tedious and annoying experience for her.

And then, I wake up.

. . .

(. . .)

A retort that I recommended to my one (former) (assisted living client) with (disabilities)…

…because the place she’s applying to is having her undergo a psych eval:

“What?! I’m perfectly fine, apart from my coprophilia.”