I’m a server at an Americanized Chinese restaurant. This is based on real experiences:
Caroline ate fried rice at one of the nineteen empty patio tables collecting dust that Thursday morning. When she started working at Lee’s Family Kitchen four years before, mornings included a gracious and considerate assortment of noodles and protein cooked fresh for the front and back of house workers to enjoy at the beginning of their shifts. Now the family breakfast disappeared before front of house was even scheduled to arrive, and Caroline satisfied herself with stealing half-portions of fried rice meant for guests whose orders were unlikely to ever come. News channels re-branding to “The Coronavirus Network.”
Folks were hoarding toilet paper now. Mostly it was those people who shop at big bulk stores, the sorts of people who can afford annual memberships and purchasing forty-eight bars of hand soap in one transaction. Caroline’s family shopped at such facilities. She figured to expect a good dozen rolls of T.P. upon arriving home in the evening.
Nel plopped beside her with his own cup of rice drowned in chili paste. Caroline kissed his shoulder.
“Are they gonna make us dress like samurais?” Nel asked her.
Caroline shook her head.
“I heard they’re changing our uniforms. We’ll be trending online.”
With a large bite, Caroline neared the bottom of her rice bowl.
“And I think they’re remodeling the dining room.”
“Sounds right,” Caroline answered.
“That means we’ll have to shut down for who knows how long.”
“Yup, that makes sense.” Caroline devoured the last of her fried rice and peered inside to see if the host had sat her section yet.
“They should make us work in face masks and rubber gloves,” Nel laughed. “The guests would feel more comfortable.”
Caroline stood up abruptly and stared at a fading vision of the patio when it was busy from opening to close. “The guests would feel more comfortable if we introduced a dollar menu or greeted them with muffins and butter,” Caroline corrected him with the friendliest voice in the restaurant.
At Lee’s Family Kitchen, the food was made fresh from locally sourced ingredients. Not so local that the food and the store shared a zip code but definitely, at least usually, a time zone. Nothing was ever frozen. Onions and tomatoes arrived on a large produce truck three mornings a week, were sliced, diced, and sent to the line and sold within forty-eight hours. Dumplings were hand-folded every morning. Each dish slid from the flaming woks into artisan-crafted ceramic plates with the sizzle and steam of an authentic family dinner. Every dish exploded in the mouth. Caroline could taste them by color and smell them by their names on the menu. And the guests asked for her favorites with exceptions: extra sauce, don’t fry the chicken, take away the onions, substitute broccoli, make the sweet dishes spicy, make the spicy ones mild, switch the oyster sauce for veggie sauce, and make it extra crispy but try not to burn it.
Aside from white rice, Nel hadn’t eaten the food at Lee’s Family Kitchen for over a year, largely on account of the calories. His personal wardrobe finally fit him again, even if his work attire now hung off his frame like a loose pillowcase. His guests never noticed. He charmed them boyishly and listened to their political rants and asked about what their children studied at college. Table after table asked to see his manager, to dote and praise and sing like starry-eyed converts of the singularly magnificent Nel. But his prime was several years before. Regulars fell away with menu changes, and the menu at Lee’s changed twice a year. Favorite dishes had a habit of leaving the menu just as they found a following.
“Can you still make that tempura dish?” asked an elderly woman at the quietest part of the morning.
“I don’t think the kitchen will be able to, but you enjoy your tea, let it steep a little longer if it needs to, look over our dim sum, and I’ll double check with my chefs.” Nel coaxed a smile from all his guests. Of course, the kitchen could do nothing.
“I need to send someone else home,” sighed the morning manager. Her confidence and exhaustion fought for control of her posture as she spoke. “Whoever goes now, I’ll send you home with lunch, and you won’t have to roll silverware.”
A career server whose children were in school shook her head. Her little ones were young and she was single, and no one was about to force her to leave. A newer kid paying his way through college and a music career had the least claim to the shift, but he argued that if he left now that he’d just hang around the mall for three hours until he clocked back on.
Caroline raised Nel’s hand for him. They left as a unit. They ate their sweet and sour chicken on a picnic table near the entrance to the food court and surveyed the faces intrepid enough to brave the mall amid a global outbreak. Mostly they saw teenagers. A few mothers with strollers looking to get out of the house, too. The usual high school group on some kind of outing walked around with their clipboards. The AM power-walkers were fewer and farther between; that group consisted for the most part of the elderly, the demographic it most behooved to stay home.
“What’ll happen when it reaches our county?” Nel asked, hesitating over his first fork-full of pineapple and bell pepper in fifteen months.
Caroline shrugged. “Somehow, we’ll get even slower. At least we’ll be employed… but barely.”
Nel’s appetite slowed drastically, and he set down his fork. “Do yo think the bars are hiring?” he asked.
Caroline shook her head. “Not ‘til April.”
At least the weather was warming.
The Favoring Wind 