A day at work like over a month ago...

...at the one (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel, where I now work at:

1) The one (quiet) (Asian-American) guy who does hosting says that he was leaving work the other day and was walking home and there was a bus stopped in the middle of the intersection because there was a homeless guy there standing in front of it, just right there in the middle of the road, and when he walked by, the guy threw a shoe at him.

2) Two (early 50s) (upper-middle class) (white) townie women are in and catching up and trying out cocktails, and when the one re-orders something she enjoys, she's like, "I could drink this out of a shoe!".

When I ask her what she likes so much about it, she says how it starts off sweet but then ends bitter.

"Just like all my relationships," I'm like.

Home maintenance:

1) I'm standing by my kitchen counter doing something and a mosquito buzzes by my ear, but when I go to kill it, it's too late and it's gone.

Then, just a very little while later, it's directly in front of me, so I kill it.

2) I go outside and I air out my woven fiber rug from my living room, and I spray it down with vinegar to kill any residual mildew on its underside, only I use the spray bottle that I had put essential oils like peppermint in eons ago as a non-toxic anti-ant solution that didn't really work, and it's only after I catch a whiff of the like vingear-and-peppermint smell a few times that's emanating off the rug and that seems familiar to me that I realize what it is, it's like kombucha, the smell is almost exactly like kombucha.

A day at work...

...a few weeks ago, at the one (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel, where I now work at:

*) Before work I'm off the bus and dawdling around the back of the building talking with my parents on the phone because I only start work in like ten or twelve minutes, and I look across the (busy) street and there's a squirrel crawling on the top of the front tire of a parked truck, like moving back and forth and looking upwards like it's looking for a place to ascend more, but it can't find any, so it finally scampers down the side of the tire and off towards the sidewalk somewhere.

1) I brought in my potter-made ceramic mug from home to put through the barside dishwasher along with my portable coffee mug, since they're so stained inside and I don't have a dishwasher at home and they really need to be cleaned.

And, they came out slightly better, but with still a lot of black gunk inside.

So, imagine all of that inside of me.

2) The one (quiet) (Asian-American) guy who does hosting came up to me and said he'd watched Blue Velvet, since we were talking TV the previous week and I had asked him if he'd ever watched Twin Peaks.

And, after that conversation, I realized that I should have told him to go and watch Blue Velvet, and what happened, but lo and behold, he found his way to it anyways somehow.

"Fuck Heineken," he was like. 

And, I asked him where he grew up and it was in a rather large city in the state, but not the largest.

"Because small towns are all like that," I was like, referring to Blue Velvet.

3) The one (quiet) (introverted) (tatted) (white) manager is there but not managing, so she's in a logoed old black t-shirt from the restaurant, instead of her simple and elegant black trousers and like soft knit sweaters and stuff that she usually wears.

And, the one (young) (taller) (macho) (Guatemalan) cook popped in after getting back from his vacation to Mexico, and he was sitting at the bar in his civvies eating a burger and having a soda and what appeared to be a glass of red wine.

"What is happening here?!", I was like, referring to them both being in non-normal clothes. "I feel so disoriented!"

4) As we're almost closing and I'm spot-sweeping, the one (big personality) (redheaded) (Irish-American) owner calls me over to a table where she's sitting with a couple regulars, and she asks me to get her a glass of rose, since she's drinking what they're drinking.

"Should I put it on your tab?", I was like.

"Yeah, put it on my tab," she says, raising her eyebrows theatrically.

And, after I get the wine from my one (affable) coworker who was in the (military), I ask him if I should tell her that he reminded her that if she doesn't close out her tab by the end of the night, we're taking it out of her paycheck.

"Yeah, go for it," he's like, and I do.

(That's a semi-regular reminder from her, when people aren't paying their tabs.)

5) When it's almost close, I get the broccoli, cheese, and mushroom soup and I put it in a new container to cool down, but the one (straggly-bearded) (thin) (white) (stoner) cook sees me doing that and says I did it right, only we're throwing that soup out tonight, we're not saving it, and he apologizes to me for my doing that extra work.

"Then wait," I was like, moving towards the door to go get a to-go cup to dump some soup into, "If we're doing that, I'll grab some to go."

And, he's immediately like, "I would do that at your own risk, it's a week old and the broccoli was already starting to go when we made it...", so I'm like, "Never mind," and I give up on that food in a way that's quite unlike me. 

6) At that same table of regulars after the owner leaves, I ask the (shrunken) (old) (white) lady who's a regular and who always leisurely downs a bottle of wine or two with a friend for hours if she wants to use "tap to pay," and automatically she's just like, "What do I have to do, dance?!"

(She was joking. And, great pun.) 

*) I get home and I crack open a (small) (orange-fleshed) heirloom watermelon that I had in my fridge from the farmer's market, only to discover that it appeared to be going bad, like a slight hiss escaped when I cut it open, and it seemed inside almost like it had been frozen and then thawed out again, like from sitting too close to the back wall of my refrigerator when the temperature went wonky.

Cat behavior.

The aging cat of the one (lesbian) sister of my one former (assisted living) client with (disabilities) has cancer, and his medications have been making him act all off, to the point where they even found him using the kitchen sink as a toilet and they had to put some tin foil in it to keep him from using it.

"Like number one or number two?", I asked her.

"Both," she was like.

"Was there like a lot of dirty dishes and food and stuff in there that he tried to use to cover it?", I was like.

. . .

(At the vet's appointment that I took her to, I recognized the [short] [young] [blonde] [female] receptionist, since she sometimes comes into the one [Thai] restaurant that I used to work at. You can't go anywhere...)

Past workplaces.

The girlfriend of the one (lesbian) sister of my one (former) (assisted living) client with (disabilities) is involved with some sort of departmental climate review at a higher ed school where she's a grad and has a regular event staffing position, and a few weeks ago when we were all catching up over coffee I asked her how that was going, since she had just gotten back from a trip there for that.

And, she started telling me about the report that she was writing and she began outlining problems about a professor with bad boundaries and two grads who went on to teach there but a dean kept them in check, and now that that dean is gone their behavior has devolved, and besides the institution has a habit of hiring grads and has a culture that's very hard to break, etc. etc. etc., and we talked about this kind of stuff for like fifteen or twenty minutes while the one (lesbian) sister of my one (former) (assisted living) client with (disabilities) was sitting there quietly, just listening, so then towards the end of the conversation, I took a verbal step back and was like, "Higher ed workplaces are not like normal workplaces, in what other workplace do you have to spend so much godawful time trying to figure out convoluted personal dynamics and work around people who don't do their jobs and who don't necessarily seem to want to," and I then added that it's just this unnecessary massive timesuck and that that whole kind of thing is just a bad fit for me because I have too much common sense and I just want to show up to my job and do the work.

It really was like this massive blast from the past.

I mean, there's some personality dynamics at the one (Irish-y) burger joint on the first floor of a historic hotel where I work now, but I could spend maybe 5 minutes discussing them, tops?

Higher ed is just exponentially different, and worse.

And they always invest so much time writing up these reports that no-one reads or does much about, and oftentimes it's just an underlying personnel or staffing problem.

It's like my one lawyer friend from (Missouri) observed years ago from her having quite a few people she knows involved in higher ed, that sector seems to involve a lot of "busy work" (i.e., work that doesn't seem to do or produce anything.)

Amen.

Well said, sister. 

Cleaning (2 of 2): Resthome farewell.

During that same cleaning, I also threw out a little mini backpack that I got at the resthome as logoed "swag" but whose zipper and front pouch got messed up when I put it in the drier once, and I think that when I swap out clothes for fall, I'm also going to get rid of a lot of stuff, including maybe a logoed jacket and scrubs from them that I have packed in at the back of my closet.

Farewell to the resthome, where I last worked 5 years ago, now. 

Cleaning (1 of 2): Hand-weights.

A few weeks ago, I really cleaned out my cottage to get organized and mentally level again after finishing a couple of huge writing projects, and during that process I remembered that I had some hand-weights in a kitchen drawer for a workout that I never do anymore, since I've now started using resistance bands instead.

So, I took them out and washed them down -- a few had spots of mildew on them, presumably from the hand-sweat that got absorbed into them, and then the high humidity in my apartment this summer -- and then I wrote out on a piece of paper the big word FREE and something about taking them in pairs, and I went and put them out by the sidewalk by the front of the front house, for whoever wanted them to take.

And, a couple of hours later, I happen to go out there again, and they were gone.

And then, a little while after that, I go to walk to the post office to mail some stuff, and there my hand-weights are, sitting out on the grass next to the "little free food pantry" out in front of a neighboring church like half a block away from me, where sometimes some people leave other stuff for others to take.

It seems that someone had transported all 6 of them there -- a big endeavor, since they're heavy and cumbersome and I had to do 2 trips to get them out to the curb --  perhaps because they thought that they'd go faster there?

It really doesn't make sense to me. 

A dream.

A few weeks ago I dreamnt -

I'm staring at a a radio and there's nondescript highly modernist classical music coming out of it, and a voice to my left says that I must identify which (Hungarian) composer it is, Ligeti or Kodály, and I say Bartók, you can't forget Bartók, and then amidst modest affirmation off to left, I think to myself, how the hell am I going to tell the difference between all their music.

And then, I wake up.

. . .

(. . .) 

Another resume horror.

The (fat) (ex-Mormon) (recent social sciences Ph.D. / adjunct) who I know from the local brewery has really been applying for jobs the past few months...  

He has a lot of good quantitative skills, but the economy is really contracted right now just like it was the last time that you-know-who was president.

Anyways, when I saw him a couple of weeks ago, he was saying that there was a recent LinkedIn post about the horrors of AI on the application process...  You used to be able to weed out a certain amount of resumes and responses based on educational gaps that surface on the submitted docs and the emails, but the increased accessibility of Grammarly-type stuff has done away with that, and now you supposedly get people showing up at interviews with clear skills gaps and everyone is like, "What?!".

Yet another resume horror, beyond how many more you have to pump out because electronic applications have increased the busywork on both sides, where people have to submit so many more applications in order to find a job and employers have to review so many more of them.

It really makes me see how wise I was by trying to get into eldercare and then sliding back into restaurant work, because doing that just cuts out that whole source of nonsense and stress from my life. 

I mean, the jobs aren't the best, but at least you don't have to undergo all of that!

It's just draining and severely demoralizing. 

Another Saturday night...

...at the one (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel, where I now work:

1) It's like not quite 5pm and it's like pre-dinner skeleton staff and there's one table in the main dining room and one in my back lounge area and then another one comes in to my back lounge area, two (neatly-dressed) (mid-40s) women, one (white) with (mid-length blonde hair) and one (black) with (short hair) and (conservative glasses) and the (white) one also has some kind of big cross and motto about freedom on her left wrist and so I assume that they're both evangelical but it turns out that they're both going to some serial killer event later that night and so are pacing their drinking till then but are still drinking a little anyhow to start while they have dinner, at least the (white) one is but the (black) one is a lightweight and so she's waiting, so, we end up talking forever, and then I step out into the main dining room and there's honest to G-d like 30 people who walked in during that brief-ish time that I was talking with them about things like Signs of a Psychopath and how from watching that I realized that I think that I've had customers who were psychopaths, at which the (black) woman was like, "Of course you have," and all interactions like that for like ten or twelve minutes, while the dining room was quickly filling up without me knowing it.

(There was a 7pm concert and a 7pm minor university sporting event that night, it turned out, ergo an early dinner rush.)

2)  This one (older) (white) couple is in who I recognize again, this (slow-speaking) (bespectacled) (blonde) woman and her (white-haired) husband with glasses, and she's at the table for 2 by herself and she says that her husband is parking the car, and I ask if they know about our customer parking spaces in a nearby lot and she says that they don't, so when her husband comes in, I tell him about them, and he decides to go move the car since he wasn't sure about the signage and legality with where he had parked, and so I step outside the door with him to stand on the front steps and gesture to where the parking spaces are and how you have to go around the building in order to access the lot, because the way that you think that you can get in is a one-way street that goes the wrong way that you need it to go.

Later, they say that they have to go because the husband says that he has to be up for work at seven, then he makes some comment like "Look at an old man like me, still working," so I ask him what his job is, and it turns out that he's a retired farmer but he still helps out one of his sons who farms and he's doing that tomorrow and so he has to be up at seven.

They grow corn and soybeans, too, it turns out. 

(I wonder if he voted for the sitting president, though... Best not to ask, and best case scenario anyhow would probably be that he did but has buyer's remorse and so is embarrassed to talk about it.) 

3) The restaurant is surprisingly busy through late at night, and I run in to dump some dishes and then run back out and print a bill, and the garbage by dish is very full and after I dump them on top of the mounded top of the trash the one (straggly-bearded) (thin) (white) (stoner) cook calls out to me pissily and is like, "Hey, you have to change that if you have time," even though I've worked at the place for like 2/3 of a year now and I've never seen anyone but kitchen staff change it, and so I'm like, "I'm right in the middle of helping some customers," and I exit promptly and I immediately see my one (affable) coworker who was in the (military) and I ask him if that's our duty because I've never done that before, and he's like "It is and it isn't," and I tell him what happened and also that I have to go cash out a table and help another table, and he's like, "I'll take care of it," and he exits back to the kitchen to take care of it, which he does.

Then, later, I have to go get some lettuce for a customer like right before close, and that same cook is now sweeping the kitchen, and the other (fatter) (perky) (white) (female) cook is also not in her typical place because cooking is now over in there and cleaning has now started, but she's closer to the food, so I get a small plate and go up and ask her to get a piece of lettuce for me, and as I talk with her as she does that I take a tiny step in towards her and immediately the one (straggly-bearded) (thin) (white) (stoner) cook is like, "Hey! Don't go in there, there's a line here that you guys should never pass," and he throws a finger out and indicates an imaginary line extending from each end of the kitchen island and he immediately starts going off about how if we do that during the shift it will be chaos etc. etc. etc., so I'm like, "Okay" and I shrug, and I get my lettuce and I run back out while he's still talking, just not interacting with all of his pissiness.

(Later, a call comes in for takeout right before close when all of the cooks had already cleaned everything, and I hear him bitching when my one [affable] coworker who was in the [military] runs it back to him -- "Why is this happening now", he was like -- and so when my one [affable] coworker who was in the [military] comes out, I kind of speak low to him and am like, "He was kind of being a bitch earlier, so this is like instant karma, I guess?", answering the cook's question to him, confidentially.)

Jigsaw puzzle record?

Like I usually do after I complete a jigsaw puzzle, I kept this one goddess-y one up for a while, which was like a huge woman's body extending up out of a ship's prow with her arms holding up the sails, and then behind her flowed like rainbows and bits and pieces of dreams, including eroticky things like a couple clutching each other and faces with suggestive expressions on them.

The puzzle also included splashes of actual glitter on select pieces, too, like some of those that formed the roiling waves beneath the ship.

Anyhow, after I finally disassembled it, I put my usual note on there that all pieces were present as of that date, and then the next day I dropped it off on the local public library's "take one, leave one" jigsaw puzzle exchange table before going upstairs to do like 45 minutes of computer work (printing stuff, answering some emails, etc.).

Then, when I came back downstairs and went by that jigsaw puzzle exchange table on my way out, what did I discover but that it was already gone.

Less than an hour before someone took it... A new record? 

Farmer's market doings (2 of 2): Tomato dogmatism.

For some reason, I always eat my heirloom tomatoes raw, and I buy regular standard garden-grown tomatoes to cut up and use in salads.

Like a few weeks ago when I ended up taking a quick 2-night trip away, however, I returned home and I needed to use up a handful of heirloom tomatoes that I had boughten earlier that week because they were just then at peak ripeness and besides I was really craving a cucumber - tomato - hot pepper salad with salt and oil and vinegar like I always make all summer long once tomatoes start coming in, so instead of what I usually do, I decided to use those heirloom tomatoes for that, and they were sooo much better in my salad than regular standard garden-grown tomatoes!

It really made me realize how much I've suffered, from my tomato dogmatism.

Farmer's market doings (1 of 2): Cabbage.

So, a few months ago, the guy at the stand with the big, cheap, good cabbages said they'd be having them for most of the season, since they did the plantings where they'd be coming in regularly.

But, now I need cabbages again, for a soup and for sauerkraut, and suddenly the entire stand has stopped coming into the farmer's market!

Like, it's not just them having no cabbages, but they're not coming in at all!

And, right when I need them, again. 

Another day at work...

...at the one (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel, where I now work at:

1) I start my dinner shift on the early side at 4pm and am by the host stand wiping menus when my one (affable) coworker who was in the (military) comes in even a bit more disheveled than usual, and the smell of liquor just rolls off of him, especially when he speaks, so to be nice about it and to tip him off and keep him from getting in trouble, I lower my voice and theatrically grimace and am like, "Hey, you know, you can really smell the liquor on you..", at which he pauses all woozily and then is like, "And I can still feel it inside me."

2) Since the name of my one (affable) coworker who was in the (military) starts with an "M" and he's been upgraded to management lately, I start alliterating a lot and saying everything is "[his first name]'s masterful management," like how when he's not busy with something he steps in and helps his employees out or like how he got everything together and all the fills were done etc. and we all clocked out early at exactly 8:59pm, so, like, when that happens, I remark upon it and describe the phenomenon and am then like, "Now that is some masterful management," and when the clock-out thing happened, too, I was like, "That is more than masterful management, that is magnificent management."

He was greatly amused at all of that, too, and at one point earlier on he was like, "More like misguided management," to which I was like, "No, at worst, your management is just midd."

3) I grab some food from a reception to take home but wolf down the two-and-a-half homemade cream cheese-and-chicken taquitos cooling in a catering tray right then instead of packing it up, and then the bus driver rides the brakes a lot on the way home and it's all just too much for me and so I have to go lie down for like two hours before I feel normal again, once I get home, and while that's happening I get a post-work message over the work messaging system from my one (affable) coworker who was in the (military), saying how he can't stop thinking about what I said to him when he walked into work and how funny it was, and I message him back that I was trying to be nice and tip him off and keep him from getting in trouble, which he says he appreciates.

Street-find.

Like about two weeks ago, I was walking home at night on the sidewalk that passes by a modern church-addition to a historic church where the offices and preschool are housed, and as I go by the fence by the playground and under the big tree that overhangs the sidewalk and that blocks out the street-lights there, there on the sidewalk in the shadowed area is a mass, and as I get closer, I see legs pulled out, and it's most of a small young rabbit, the back legs and the torso but no front legs or head, and instead just a small crisp bloody twist of flesh that slightly curls up and to the right all in one direction, where the rest of the body should be but is not.

Addendum.

One of the public defenders who was there was a regular at the one (Thai) restaurant where I used to work at, which I had been wondering about, whether that would happen or not for a trial during jury duty, whether she would surface or not in some capacity.

They do ask you if you know or have associations with any witnesses, any of the other jurors, any of the courtroom staff or lawyers etc., and I would have had to 'fess up to that, just like how the one nurse-practitioner at my doctor's office said that she knew another juror i.e. me (although she would not say how, because she said that HIPAA prevented her from disclosing that -- very professional of her!).

Anyhow, that public defender was honestly one of our favorite regular customers, and she didn't socialize with us or anything, but she was always very nice and pleasant, and we'd try to do her special favors, like once she was in late for lunch and she was sitting out on the patio and waiting for people and she said something about how she was hungry, so I offered to bring her out her salad from the lunch special right then, since that's what she'd be getting anyways and we could "bend the rules" and get it to her ASAP without her formally placing an order and then she could place her entree order with the rest of her party once they arrived.

And, too, once when I was at the table refilling water or prebussing plates I overheard her talking to a friend about a thing with her kid and summer camp, where he said that he wanted to go but then right before it started he wanted to back out, and so as she relayed to her friend that she had said to him, she was like, "Hey, buster, we asked you before and whatever you decided would have been fine, but you committed, so we need you to follow through with that commitment." 

I mean, I didn't know her, and it took me a long time to connect her to the name that appears in the newspaper, but still, she was a regular customer who I waited on for a period of like three to three-and-a-half years, and that's not nothing.

I recognized one or 2 of the other lawyers, too, but they were more neutral, whereas with her, she built up so much goodwill over the course of those years, that I had strongly positive impressions of her before she even began speaking, and I honestly felt like I would have hands-down paid more attention to whatever she said before any of them started speaking, though of course I wouldn't have felt obligated to please her with my decision, and none of the lawyers including her had ever surfaced yet at the new restaurant where I've been working since January.

Again, if I had been called up, I would have said as much, as well as mentioned that she was a "top-tier" customer who was a favorite of a lot of the staff, whether she knew it or not.

I wonder what the judge would have thought of that, or the other lawyers who came into the restaurant.

Jury duty, redux.

Everyone was called back for the 2nd week, and then that same Monday I was called in again to the courtroom as a potential juror for a murder trial, although I wasn't called up into the box for the first round of jurors or even for the second round, where they finally got enough people to sit and enough alternates.

Since last time they had been so interested in content overlaps with what I've studied at the graduate level, I sat there and started collating a list of everything related to killing and death in my head, for if I was asked that again:

- I've taught on why cults go violent, which includes not only self-directed violence (the mass suicides of the Heavens Gate UFO cult), but also cults that kill (e.g. the Aum Shinrikyo sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system), for which I assigned students victim testimonies.

- One of the most moving experiences in my life was meeting Peoples Temple survivors at an academic conference and looking at personal photo albums from Jonestown and before, the photos of which certainly included the dead, and everyone who died at Jonestown wasn't a suicide (a common misconception about that mass casualty event).

-  For academic writing, I've covered stuff like ISKCON killings (the Hare Krishnas).

- For popular writing, I've delved into why Luigi Mangione snuffed a CEO (radicalization through stuff like self help literature).

- For the one ancient language that I've been studying intensively since the pandemic, I read about stuff like enculturated corpse mutilation and display during warfare and retainer sacrifice and I have even attended an online conference where retainer sacrifice was covered... A local animator who got cancelled who I'm friends with has gotten interested in this topic, too, so like over the past couple months we read an Open Access academic book about human sacrifice and ritual killing in Antiquity, and just that past week we discussed things like evidence for Phoenician child sacrifice (a lot of early excavations were mishandled, but it seems that they did indeed sacrifice babies and infants), as well as headhunting in the more-recent past.

- For the one ancient language that I've been studying since the pandemic, I've been regularly reading through an ancient text corpus over the past couple of years, and it includes stuff like spells to help the king ascend in the afterlife through his slaughtering and consuming the gods.

-  For the one ancient language that I've been studying since the pandemic, a major theme is magic that threatens the gods, and I have a recent article where I translated some magic words and it turns out to be a magician's threat to hunt down and knife and kill a deity, if he doesn't do what you want.

That is like so much stuff, that you could easily forget to list it all out in the moment.  And I mean, if they want to know if you watch Law and Order and have been a victim of a crime or if you've seen gunshot victims when you're a nurse at work, I'm sure they'd want to know academic work around murder and killing and whatnot.

I wonder what would have happened if I had been called up and if I actually listed all of that off from the jurybox, in like an extended monologue: "Peoples Temples survivors," "ritual killing," Luigi Mangione...  Some (black) family members (of the victim?) were in the back observing jury selection, so they probably would have been like wtf, and maybe the defendants too.

I would have stressed after all of this that I was being serious and that this occurred in formal syllabi and in peer-reviewed publications etc. and that it was only a small part of my work over the course of like 20 years, but I still wonder what they would have thought about me, probably that I was a freak or something.

A recent dream of sausage.

 Like a week-and-a-half ago, I dreamnt -

I'm on a rounding hillside just below the crest and someone official just outside of my range of vision is explaining to me the process of animal corpse disposal, as we review these small piles of animal carcasses that are mounded up here and there on the green grass, and as I look at a grey-and-white wild goose with bloody gore around its chest and neck where the wing meets the body, they explain that sausage-makers can take these bodies as-is without close inspection and it's entirely legal, and that's what ground up and put into the meats that I like so much.

. . .

(. . .) 

On tap-to-pay.

Like a month ago at the one (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel where I work now, we got a new handheld "POS" where it's like the same screens that you see as before, but on smaller modules that are less heavy and that also have all this stuff on the front so that you can swipe credit cards tableside.

And, they've been encouraging us to use them, to save time when it's busy. 

I didn't really do it at first since I hate learning new technology, but since then I've started to do it, at least selectively.

If it's super-busy, I tend to offer it to everyone, but if it's not, I then split, where I offer it to the younger generation, but typically not to the older generation.

In general, I've noticed that younger people love it and they just see it as a plus because it's a more convenient form of payment, but older people tend to feel that it's somehow tacky.

And, I've quizzed customers about this, and found out as much.

"I like it since you don't have to carry a wallet," said a (faintly-accented) (college-age) (Asian-American) student in with her (college-age) (Latina-American) friend, and then when I explained my logic and thoughts, she said that she could see how some older customers would like a printed check "and that whole production," which she said nicely but in way that was like she was not quite stating the judgment that she actually felt towards them.

Like, from younger people who I've quizzed, only one (younger) (white) woman who was in with her boyfriend agreed with me, and she practically burst with emotion and was like, "YES, I have always thought that was tacky!", and I commiserated with her and pointed out that we have a lovely kind of elegant setting and a nice cocktail list, but then we go and do tableside payment?, it just doesn't make sense to me.

As for older people, they tend not to like it, and one (early 60s) (fatter) (white) lady with (helmet hair) who's a regular along with her husband said that she finds it awkward to punch in a tip while the waiter stands there, and imagine how that would be if it was bad service, and if it's good service, she feels like she panics and just hits the highest button on there, whereas if it was a printed receipt, she'd probably take her time and leave even more money, so in a way, we're shorting ourselves by using the tap-to-pay, maybe.

From everyone I've talked to, too, no-one feels like it's stereotyping, to regularly offer it to younger people, but not to older. 

Addendum.

Customers who are self-consciously spontaneous and casual are the worst.

They think that they're cool with everything and the lack of rigidity is easy on you, but it actually takes more time and they have higher expectations, in addition to them having a repulsively higher self-image from being "cool" and "low-key" and "not one of those customers."

Like, they'll think that they can just grab you and tell you something and get you to do it right away, or call out to you, and it just ends up being them doing whatever they want whenever they want, and it's almost like you're their servant rather than them being customers who are given moments of carefully-created space in which they articulate their needs and you meet them, like, it's actually those customers who you see looking and waiting for you if they happen to need something when you're not over by them.

The grabbing chairs from another table is a big "tell" -- who does that at a restaurant, except for someone who's entitled?

And trying to help you out by mopping up shit with napkins is nice on the surface, but actually more symptomatic of their general obliviousness and lack of self-awareness. 

A thread throughout all of this is non-recognition of social boundaries with space -- with chairs that the restaurant moves but not you, with the waiter being at a distance and there's invisible walls where you should not call out, with the waiter as someone who creates narrow spaces of exchange along set patterns and comes into it so you can interact with them, rather than you initiating it wherever and however you want.