Customer Service

On a day-to-day basis, the customers I interact with while waiting tables never cease to horrify me in shocking, ugly, new ways.  At the end of my shift, on the drive home, I am finally able to exhale and forget about how poorly some strangers treat their restaurant servers.  Many patrons seem to confuse server and servant, treating me as free labor, flexing their power where they can.  Granted, for every wretched, selfish, rude person I quietly try to kill with kindness, there are ten generous, friendly, wonderful people who fall on the complete opposite end of the customer-spectrum.  But we aren't talking about them right now.

The other day, the Gap I was in was in the process of closing up shop for the day.  The clerks had been encouraging everyone to check out, informing us they were closed, their pained smiles suggesting they, too wanted to go home and be finished with customer service for the day.  I made my way to the back of the store to pay for my wares.

"So is the designer going to come out with something new soon?"  The woman at the next register over asked her exhausted-looking clerk.  

"Probably," he said, "we get new things all the time."

"But Spring is going to go away, right?  We have to be getting into summer soon."

"We're in summer now," he said.

"I just want all this neon, 80s to go away, I don't like it.  The designer is going to do something new soon, right?"  

I'll spare you the rest, but she essentially continued to sprinkle in jabs about how much she doesn't like Gap's current clothing line while asking the clerk the price of her sale items as he rang them up ("Six dollars?  Put that one back, I don't want it.") and I realized that it isn't just me who has to spend my weekends dealing with rude idiots.  The woman finished checking out, corralled her children from under the sale racks and went home.  The clerk exhaled audibly and I exchanged a knowing glance with him and smiled.  

Be good to each other, especially if the person you're interacting with is wearing a plastic name tag.

Naked Bike Ride

Every June, there's a large naked bike ride in Portland associated with Pedalpalooza (basically bike month).  Naked bike ride was this last Saturday.  Since the naked bikers don't typically stop for red lights/stop signs, and since everyone who isn't naked/on a bike is usually stunned on the sidewalk staring at passing genitalia, the city essentially shuts down.

I'm all for expressing yourself/furthering public education regarding how bike-friendly Portland is, but I wonder if my complete lack of desire to participate in the naked bike ride really differentiates me from the rest of the Portlandians as much as I thought it did.

I first encountered naked bike ride last year when I was trying to drive home from work and got stuck at an intersection while the flesh parade passed.  I still wasn't entirely on the Portland bandwagon at that point, and wrote the bikers off with the bad drivers as yet another excuse to move back to California.

However, earlier this year, I fully converted to enjoying Portland and almost everything it has to offer.  A handful of my coworkers participated in this year's NBR, and unlike last year, I knew it was coming and was able to decide whether or not I was going to participate.  But naked bike riding still doesn't sound fun to me.  First of all, I don't think I could do that to my poor bike (that I bought used).  Second, I'm cold all the time.  I don't think riding a bike around Portland at night with clothes on sounds fun, why add the coldness factor?  Especially when you get to the end and you have no clothes.  That's a LOT of time spent freezing.  Third, the bike ride is pretty dangerous.  Drunk people on bikes/skateboards/rollerblades flying down hills = can't end well.

After mulling over all the reasons not to participate in Pedalpalooza, I wondered if I was too hardened for Portland.  Why don't I want to participate in the utopian summer naked bike ride?  (Well, I know why.  See: above)  But then I realized, only 1000 people do naked bike ride.  AND there are non-nude events associated with Pedalpalooza, with fewer participants and more clothing, like the never-nude ride...  So, maybe next year.

Tao Lin

So, as many of you probably haven't recently noticed, since I don't post very often or have Facebook (both of these things really detract from my readership), I haven't posted anything in quite a while.  I think this is partially due to the fact that, historically, my blog has fulfilled some sort of purpose.  Historically, it's been a travel blog, then a means to document living with my grandmother.  Now, it doesn't serve much of a purpose but I would like to keep it going.

This morning, I was researching Tao Lin, a 20-something author who just published his third novel and is en route to Portland (among other places) as part of his book tour.  In this process, I realized that the predominant theme in my life right know is working on writing short fiction and reading anything I can get my hands on.  I decided, for now, my blog can be used to summarize what I'm working on (reading or writing-wise) and my general thoughts on that topic.

Back to Tao Lin.  Initially, I got really excited about the idea of an easily digested author who teaches short story classes to MFA students and who openly talks about drug use and growing up with exposure to multiple cultures.  But the more I learn about him, the more I grew concerned that he is merely in the right place at the right time, taking advantage of our solipsistic internet culture, spending his time documenting any thought that occurs to him (usually while he's tripping on all kinds of drugs), now spreading outside of the literary world into filmmaking.

I still haven't read any of the longer pieces he's written, but stay tuned.  I feel like this could be the beginning of a longer phase for me (if not a Lin-based phase, someone similar), especially after reading so many classics this year.

I could really use something fresh and unserious.

And we both like Jean Rhys.

Adventures in Food Service

Last night, I picked up a shift at a restaurant where I used to work.  Little did I know that it was a half-night, where fifty percent of sales were to go to a local elementary school.  This entailed small children managing to be literally everywhere while I waded through them carrying beers to their parents.  At the end of the night, after miraculously surviving my shift, I was asked to fill ketchups.

Now, filling ketchups is a relatively simple task.  There is a bladder of ketchup mounted to the wall above an ice cream freezer, but after filling 95% of the ketchups, the bladder ran out.  I ran downstairs where backup bladders are stored, switched out the filling-valve from the empty bag, and prepared myself to fill my final two bottles.  I fondly remembered my first training session at the restaurant, almost a year earlier, when I had been shown how to change the ketchup bag.  My trainer had replaced the ketchup in the wall mount and accidentally triggered the valve in the process, squirting ketchup on  herself and me (someone who didn't even eat ketchup because I was so disgusted by it).  I silently patted myself on the back for managing to get the bag in place and all these ketchups filled without getting a drop on my clothes.

I grabbed my second to last empty bottle, and simultaneously, the ketchup bladder valve decided it was tired of existing, and spontaneously combusted, spewing ketchup literally everywhere.  We're talking that scene in The Shining when the elevator doors open in the lobby and a sea of blood comes pouring out (but with ketchup).  I helplessly stood there, trying to jam my hand in the ketchup bag opening to stop the flow while shouting "Help.  Someone.  Please," as ketchup ran down the back of the freezer below it and all over me, the floor, and anything else in a six-foot radius.  Eventually someone grabbed a receptacle for the ooze and captured the rest of it, and I got to spend the following forty five minutes cleaning up the mess to the best of my ability.  For minimum wage.

In conclusion, I'm living the dream.

Portland

I haven't blogged recently, but after deleting my Facebook and trying to back myself into a corner of productivity (it isn't working), I decided I should start blogging again so any worried parties could be assured that I am safe and sound.

 I just hit my one year anniversary mark of living in Portland, Oregon. The city is definitely starting to grow on me: I'm appreciating the delicious food and endless parking spots. The coldest phase of winter seems to have passed and things are looking up. I'm still searching for a wine-related job, and am waitressing in the interim (which included cleaning up human feces and vomit this most recent Sunday), but I'm telling myself the waitressing will push me to a. write a bestselling novel, or b. get a grown-up job.

More blogs to come, I have plenty of procrastinating to do regarding laundry and dishes.