Another day at the (Thai) restaurant where I work now, with the return of diablo:

1) A new (Guatemalan) guy has started working in the kitchen, and it turns out that he has the same first name as my one (Pentecostal) (Guatemalan) coworker, which opened up the door for me to make all sorts of (Spanish-language) jokes about who’s el primero [their first name] (‘the first ---‘) and who’s el segundo [their second name] (‘the second ---‘), and then who’s el mejor [their first name] (‘the better/best ---‘) – of course my (Pentecostal) (Guatemalan) coworker said it was clearly him, when I asked – and also saying stuff like adios los [their name]s (‘bye ---s’) when I leave at night. 

And, once when I said something about el otro [their name] (‘the other ---‘), some of them overheard and immediately they were like, “Oh, diablo!”, and they started up chattering about that, and the word diablo started flying about me again for some reason on this occasion, although oftentimes in the recent past I have been engaging in similar behavior and it goes unremarked upon.

2) The one (Guatemalan) guy who I started the diablo joke told me that the one (very young) (Guatemalan) woman is moving to California and the next day was her last day, so I talked to her, and it turns out that she has an uncle out there, and she will also be living in a university town out in California. Since I wasn’t going to be working the next day, I made sure to tell her that I heard the news and to wish her buena suerte con todo (‘good luck with everything’), and she wanted to take a picture with me, so we did that. That night, too, she was waiting for her ride inside by the door when I left, so I again wished her good luck, only I made motions with my arms, too, and was like buena suerte con el surfing (‘good luck with the surfing’), which she got a kick out of.

3) My one (Chinese-American) coworker was making a delivery and had his car parked and was about to leave and drive away when two (white) (college-age) (girls) pulled up and one swung her door wide open and it reached all the way over and knicked his door, and so he just rolled down his window and was like, “Really?” to them, he said to me.

(He said that that put him in a really bad mood.)

“Not to stereotype, but that’s a very white thing to do,” he was like.

. . .

An unexpected customer encounter.

Back before I got COVID, I was at the one local farmer’s market in the college town that I now live in, and one weekend I went up to the one corn stand to get some nice fresh sweet corn like I always do when it's in season, and there bending over the bins were some occasional customers from the (Thai) restaurant where I work now, this (vaguely Jewish) (graying brown-haired) (curly) (bearded) (Jewfro) (scrawny) (bohemian) (college town professional) guy with glasses and his (taller) (thin-faced) (white) (cascading grey curls) (female) partner, who had been telling me just a week beforehand when they were in at the restaurant how they had worked remotely this summer and had gone on a long trip and camped among the redwoods.

(They really do give off “lovers” jacuzzi vibes like from that one old Saturday Night Live skit)

And so, when I saw them right there at the farmer's market, I said hi, and they both just looked at me blankly, and then I realized that they didn’t recognize me because I didn’t have on a KN95 mask like I always do when I wait tables at the restaurant, and so I self-identified as the waiter guy from the (Thai) restaurant and then they both were like “Ohhh!”, and we started talking about how people look differently with their masks off.

And, I told them a (probably true) trivia fact from a (music-loving) security guard who I knew from college, that the reason Roy Orbison always wore sunglasses at concerts and whatnot was so that when he wasn't performing, he could take them off and walk around everyday and no-one would recognize him.

“So I guess I’m the Roy Orbison of [the name of the (Thai) restaurant where I work now],” I was like, to their small smiles of delight.

A question about my language learning.

Like a month ago at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, my one new (college -age) (Thai) (immigrant) coworker was asking me about the different languages I knew, and if I could speak them.

And, I said that many of them were dead, and the living ones, a lot of those were for reading, so you can maybe speak a little, but you have academic vocabulary to read an academic article, but you don’t know how to order in a restaurant or say that you have a problem with your cell phone and need to shut it off and charge the battery.

“Oh, I understand,” she was like. “I think I was like that, when I first moved here.”

“I can see that,” I was like. “Like, you probably didn’t know all of the vocabulary around beer pong.”

And, she laughed, and was like, “No, I definitely did not.”

Some mild gossip related to my smoothing things over:

At the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker said that my one (older) (Thai) coworker who’s a whiz at the phones really liked this local bakery giftcard that I had gotten her, to smooth things over when twice in the same week I accidentally messed up my working two shifts and inadvertently stuck her with a lot more work, and at a time when the owners were out of town on vacation and she was already taking on a lot more work from that.

“How did he know that I like that bakery?”, she said that she had said, and so I told her that I had guessed that since once I had taken the bus to a dentist’s appointment and I had seen her outside on the street there outside of that particular bakery, and so between that and her love of baked goods, I had put two and two together and had thought that she might like it that bakery and use a giftcard from it.

Later, I asked her about that bakery, and she said that yes, she likes it and that she does go there sometimes, and once they had these cookies or pancakes or something, that they combined to make look like Minnie Mouse.

A child’s questions inspired by biblical stories.

So, my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend (the sister of the brother-sister pair) has been reading her oldest daughter who’s like six some adaptations of biblical stories from Jewish and Christian and Islamic traditions, since she wants her to know them.

And, it turns out that her daughter is really fascinated by the story of the baby Moses getting left in the bullrushes, since there’s just something about the story that just really fascinates her.

And, once when God was mentioned, her daughter asked her who God was, and so she explained to her that he’s someone big and great who looks over everything.

“So where is he?”, she was like, and my friend had to explain to her that he doesn’t live anywhere, but he lives everywhere, including in you, and you can talk to him, if you want.

“So is he good or bad?”, she was like.

. . .

An evening at the (Thai) restaurant a few months ago:

1) A table of like three (middle-aged-to-older) (white) people sit on the patio, and they all decisively order a beer right away when they sit down.

“You’re the party table of [restaurant name],” I’m like, “Only be careful,” and at that I gesture to the pavement where someone had spilled their curry, which had left a stain that made it look someone had vomited there.

2) Like 8:30pm or so when we’ll still pretty busy, a(n early 30s-ish) (bit taller than average) (skinny-to-normal-build) (medium-skin-toned) (shaved-headed) (black) guy with (very unblinking) (wide open) (very light-colored) eyes comes striding in towards the back of the restaurant as I emerge from behind the back of the counter with a full water pitcher, and as we go to pass he suddenly turns towards me and motions to grab the water pitcher and bring it to his mouth as he says something about how he needs something to drink, as I suddenly pull the water pitcher back out of shock even before I fully realize what’s going on.

“Okay,” I’m like, “Wait here, I’ll get you a glass of water,” and I go back around the counter and I get a Styrofoam cup and put some icewater and a lid and a straw in it and I go reach over the counter and I give it to him, and he immediately turns and rips the lid off and starts drinking from it, and without even looking he throws his arm out and fires the lid as trash onto the then-empty wallside table where we sometimes keep some takeout, as he goes to go striding out the door.

And, I notice that my coworkers suddenly saw all that, and so I’m like, “Did you see that?”, and they hadn’t seen all of it, and so I explain to them what had happened, and I say that as soon as I realized he was trying to take and drink water out of my water pitcher, I just wanted to get him some water and get him the heck out of the restaurant, since he was that crazy.

And, I’ve never seen that guy before, and I have never seen him again.

. . .

A sign of the increasing (homelessness) problem in the college town that I now live in:

Like a month ago, my one (older) (Thai) coworker who’s a whiz at the phones tells me towards the end of the shift that when she came in like ten-to-five for the start of dinner shift, there was a(n older) (black) man peeing by the dumpster in the back alley just outside the restaurant back door.

. . .

(I ask her, and she’s never seen that in all the years working there, though once years ago she saw a[n older] [white] woman squat and pee in the bus shelter by a big box grocery store on the far side of town, while she was waiting there for the bus to come home after going shopping there.)