Notes on Random Things

In preschools all over the country, teachers don't read the classics like "Where the Wild Things Are." Instead, they read similar versions like "The Little Engine That Could; Joe Get Your Finger Out of Your Nose" and "Clifford the Big Red Dog; Sure You're a Princess, Joan."

Preschool age children are little mimics. I play a game with the kids called "Sleeping Bunnies" in which I sing a song about bunnies sleeping, and then waking up. The kids lie down and pretend to sleep and then "wake up" and hop around like bunnies. During one round two children proceeded to pat the back of another child who was pretending to sleep, exactly the way the teachers pat backs to get children to sleep during naptime.

If you are having troubles with your marriage, your children will know and pass that fact along to their teachers. We don't want to know.

Customers will always sit at the dirty table, even when there are clean, better tables available.

Women will give you more crap and be pickier than men. This is to women and men servers/bartenders. After realizing this I went into a mini tailspin, worrying that I was (underneath it all) a misogynist. Or possibly that women have to work harder to get the service that men get. Or maybe some women just feel that other people, other places, are always getting better service than they are. I promise you, people of the world, not everyone is trying to screw you over.

Chances are likely that shit has been talked about you in the kitchen if you have ever gone to a restaurant.

When you are a server, you are seriously working for tips. The house gives you a salary purely to have something from which to pull your taxes. This means that if service was adequate, you tip AT LEAST 15%. It also means if the kitchen messes up or is slow (but your food is hot), don't take it out on your server (this comes with the caveat that kitchens don't mess up that often).

If you ever become a server/bartender: call the patron "sweetie" or "sugar" or "honey." Even if they are older than you. It puts them neatly in their place: you are a mother-like figure there to competently take care of them in a no-nonsense, no frills fashion.