dude. so much to say.

worked all weekend last weekend. skipped class this morning because I stayed up all night watching a disk of House. had a mini-crisis (almost entirely self-created) last week because I hadn't done an assignment that was worth 50 points of a 1000 point class average. At the same time, it was a 6-8 page care plan for a stroke patient - you know, integral skills to have for the field! The stuff that I'll be doing non-stop from here on out in nursing school! eep. Eighteen mini-panic attacks later, I turned it in, not even late, and complete with all five journal articles, cited in APA format. This time the payoff for resolving the drama that I created wasn't so good, didn't really feel worth it. fuckit.

Finally went to Campus Health to put my cloudy, smelly urine in a cup and find out if it's a uti without the pain and burning (i've been symptomatic for about a year now, and have only recently had health insurance and easy access to a clinic to see someone. Can we say functional limitations in healthcare?) Starting cipro today and I even managed to advocate for a follow-up urine sample to be ordered to ease my mind that it is resolved with the drugs.

Signed a lease on a passive solar apartment yesterday - wow oh wow it is cool! big windows, brick floors, W/D, and no pet rent. exactly what I wanted, although not on the side of town I was hoping for.
May is looking a little crazy-making - finals the first week, a much belated birthday party for the kid the second week. The semester starts (with my first clinical rotation!!!) and later that afternoon, I'm leaving for a four day retreat in the mountains in the third week, and then I'll get to pack and move before June 1. sigh. I really don't understand how I've been able to pay a security deposit before the summer fin aid dispersement.

found out this weekend that one of the cool kids from work is going to join the Army for six years. I teared up, and then handed him my address like I was in the third grade and had just found out my family was moving to Georgia. I was embarrassed, and sent this email today. Still a little embarrassing, but it feels resolved now.
Hey R!
I saw you on campus the other day, and realized I could look up your email through the campus directory. I wanted to apologize for throwing a little tantrum the other night. It was such a shock to realize that I wouldn't see you again at work (and since that's the only place I see you of course, then it's not likely that we'll meet again). I was a little surprised at how upset I was, and didn't really know what to say (or what was appropriate to share without being creepy and weird, you know?).
It's odd to think about the loss of a close acquaintance - you are someone that I'm always happy to see, and who I really enjoy talking with. I like the way that you are sarcastic, but not often nasty (probably since I think that I tip that balance too often toward just being rude, as opposed to funny or clever). You manage irony without being an asshole - which is a rare gift, it seems. I think that you're crazy smart and genuinely a sweet person. You remind me of my kid in a way (and I know that's weird to say - and possibly to hear) and that's most of the reason that I was upset to hear you are going into the Army. I don't know anyone personally who is serving in the military right now - and so I'm privileged to be (sarcastically) academic and removed from the whole situation.
My dad was in the Marines, mostly before I was born, and I know that it was important to him to enlist, and to serve his time. I also know that he was a unspeakably different person after having served than he would have been without the experience of service in Vietnam, and I usually think of the loss of innocence, the gain of the burden of seeing horrible things. I don't really have a concept of the other more positive pieces that he spoke about regarding his service - the discipline, the feeling of being a part of something that made a difference, the actual 'service' part of serving the country. I had this irrational hope that time could be just frozen, that we could just talk when I happen to work with you, and talk about how ridiculous the world (and the restaurant) is... The thought of you being at the whim of the nutbags running this country's military takes my breath away, truly. At the same time, I want to say that I support your decision, since I know that you've thought it through carefully, and I feel like you have the strength to handle the experience. Other than having a kid, I've never done something like this that so immediately and profoundly affects my life.
I would be proud if my son grew up to be like you.
I wish you all the best. I'd be happy if we kept in touch - it would be good to know how you are doing.

with love, kati

Yep, it's officially reiterated - I'm a geek.

How Could You?!

I work as a server. I have achieved a level of proficiency that may be termed "expert" within the Dreyfus Model. I'm good at waiting tables, and most days I enjoy it. However, after 11 years of restaurant experience, I am still startled when I receive an 11% tip from a table that did not exhibit any signs of dissatisfaction during the time we spent together. It violates my sense of fairness and decency and makes me kick things. It also makes me run through a mental checklist of the meal, questioning my service, my perceived level of rapport with the people at the table and missed clues that the whole thing was going to go pear-shaped when I see the credit card line. I used to get so full of righteous indignation about bad tips that I would rant about public-access cable shows about the wages of tipped employees in the state and flyers in parking lots about how to calculate 15 and 20% easily in your head.

Today, I had a table of four adults (clearly parents and a set of grandparents) and one 9 month old child. I'm often quite interactive with the kids at my table - I like hanging out with kids a lot when I'm not responsible for them. This baby was Cute, with all the adorable characteristics of that age - fat little fingers, quiet but smiley, huge rosy cheeks, content to sit in her highchair while the adults ate, happy to be on someone's lap, making eye contact and imitating facial expressions. There are few things more entertaining to me than trying to figure out what a 6-12 month old is thinking by watching their eyebrows. I digress (which may be foreshadowing for the piss-poor tip I got on this check).

Things that I think went right (ie, things that support my assumption that I would receive a 16-20% for the bill): Greeted table promptly, kept tea glasses refilled throughout meal, remembered to bring extra chili paste for Mr. Make It As Hot as Possible, acknowledged cuteness of child, was not flustered during service (last table of the shift, no other tables that I was dashing around to, splitting checks 5 ways on 4 credit cards and boxing up leftovers), eye contact with adults, pleasant interactions, ready with check presenter when older man reached for his wallet.


Possible reasons why this man left me $7 on $68:

• he is an asshole (again, not supported by my limited interactions with him)
• he never tips more than 10% (possible risk factor on this one - he was over 50 yo and white, which although certainly not causally linked, has been correlated in my experience with randomly shitty tipping behavior)
• he was angry that I was talking to the baby and wished I would have left the table so that they could dote on the kid without some stranger hanging out and showing off her impression of an octopus.
• he was not happy/comfortable with paying for these freeloader kids and not prepared to shell out $68 pre-gratuity. he didn't want to come to this fancyass highfaluting chinese joint anyway, he wanted to go to Bojangles.
  
• he thought that because we pulled two four-top tables together, they were considered a big party and gratuity is included.
• they were actually in a much greater hurry than I suspected and my take of them as "leisurely family lunch" was totally false.
• the fact that when I first approached the table, they had neither menus or silverware, commonly provided by the host staff when seating a table. this was a mystery to me, and I stated as much, then left to procure said items immediately. maybe there's more to this part of the story.

Part of the reason this kind of thing bothers me is that I will never never never know why this person chose to leave half the amount of money that I expected him to leave. (though, if pressed, I gotta go with the octopus imitation. come on, now. what was i thinking??) I can't ask, and oddly enough, my memory of faces is so poor that I wouldn't be able to pick him out of a crowd at Starbucks tomorrow even if I happened to have the balls to walk up and ask him why he stiffed me (which I know that I don't). I can't know if I did something akin to wiping my ass at the table and then mixing their sauce without knowing it, or if this is all about him, the way he always tips, the way his father tipped and his father before him. No, wait, his grandfather wouldn't have been eating out, unless he was a Rockefeller.

I also will never never never know if he was Non-compliant with American societal norms in restaurant tipping, or has a Knowledge Deficit related to confusion about automatic gratuity policies. What if he meant for me to have a 28% tip because he figured 18% was already in the tab? This one is good for snapping me out of Thinking Bad Thoughts about the dude, but doesn't really hold up to scrutiny, since all he had to do was look carefully at the bill and note the absence of a line that read "Gratuity Included: $15.23" or something.

Shit, maybe the guy can't do percentages in his head. Add it to the list.

The nice thing about being an expert in the field is that these tips are now the exception, not the norm and don't ruin my day the way they used to (when I was getting them all the time!). With all my gathered experience, I trotted off after cashing out and got myself a big ass cinnamon latte and forgot about it. (That Dharma and Greg episode is playing in my head right now - the one about Dharma's annual thought detox ritual when she says -Put it in a bubble. Let it float away - about 86 times in 20 minutes!)

Yep. Let it float away.


(edited to add: Move the decimal left one digit for 10%, then double that figure for 20%, or add half of that number to itself for 15%. Servers in my state earn $2.13 per hour in wages.)

(re-edited to add the link of one of old favorite blogs that i just remembered: Waiter Rant.)