Category: observation

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customers Hot Dog Days observation Work Diaries

"Can you please die?"

A guy approached the hot dog stand at work today and was talking on his phone; in the middle of his conversation, he asked me for a Diet Pepsi, so I immediately quoted the price to him: “1.50, please.” The guy’s eyes widened and he proceeded to comment on the exorbitant price to his friend, saying “I’m paying freaking $1.50 for a can of Diet Pepsi! Isn’t that insane?”

He then hands me his $20 bill, which I had to check for authenticity (it’s standard protocol for us to check all big bills). He continues to make commentary to his friend, saying “AND the girl is checking my $20 bill to make sure I didn’t make it just today! Oh my GOSH!” (Yes, the man was rather flamboyant). Finally, he gets off the phone and says to me, “Oh my gosh, can you die now?”

I gave him a look of shock, but I could tell he was joking (kind of…). Then he rambled on about the economy, talking about how, “How can you charge so much for a soda when the economy is in shambles?” And all I could say was “Well, I don’t set the prices, sir…” Then he ended on a nice/weird note, saying, “Well, I hope you will make A LOT of money with your cart…good location, by the way!”

And then he pranced off.

Categories
Busride Observations My San Francisco Chronicles observation rant transportation

Ignorant people on the bus.

Today I felt very irritated in the morning while I was riding on the bus. Around Columbus and Union, three men got on the bus and were being so very rude. From the way they dressed and acted, I could tell they were from a very rural area in the US, and it really infuriated me to hear them being so openly ignorant. They were making fun of a Hispanic woman talking on her cell phone, and kept making snide remarks about the minorities in San Francisco.

Um, excuse me? You want to talk about being racist/ignorant in a city where diversity rules? I was so seriously pissed off when I got off the bus, because it just angered me: why were these men here in San Francisco and badmouthing minorities? I felt like they were completely out-of-place and that they were just here to cause trouble. Really, when we were all on the bus, they were probably the minority on the bus…yet they insisted on being bigots and being rude about Chinese and Hispanics.

Yes, please, just go back to where you came from, because we don’t need people like you in San Francisco.

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My San Francisco Chronicles observation

Interesting Facts about San Francisco

Since the hot dog carts are “buddies” with the people who own the double-decker tour buses in front of Macy’s, I was able to score free passes for me and my sister today to tour a bit of the city.

Riding the tour bus made me feel a little strange, yet also more appreciative of San Francisco. I actually learned a bit of facts/history of the city that I hadn’t really known before; here are a few tidbits that I can remember:

– North Point Street used to be the northernmost point in San Francisco; Beach/Jefferson blocks were built upon landfill.

– The Marina is built all upon landfill, which means, during earthquakes, the ground there is least stable; becomes “like quicksand”.

– Pacific Heights is the most expensive neighborhood in the city.

– Cow Hollow used to actually have a lot of cows/farms there until all the “rich people” demanded that the farms be removed from the city (way back when).

– Only one cemetery exists in San Francisco (San Francisco National Cemetery); most San Franciscans graves are located in Colma, a small town in the South Bay.

I’m trying to rack my brain for more facts, but unfortunately have forgotten a lot. It was nice to see more of the northwestern part of the city (Marina/Cow Hollow/Presidio); these were areas I hadn’t really had much chance to check out just yet.

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#foodie fruit observation

Psychological Allergies.

My friend introduced this term/phrase to me a couple of months ago: “psychological allergies.” Basically, these are “allergies” we have against certain foods for psychological reasons, i.e., the taste of certain foods makes us feel sick, etc. We are not really allergic–just have an aversion against the food.

Recently, I have developed a psychological allergy against oranges. Why? I received too many oranges during Chinese New Year and became sick of eating them day in, day out. I had way too many and had to give away some oranges to friends and homeless people. Granted, I can still eat oranges, but I feel sick when I eat them now. Something about the texture makes me feel queasy these days.

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customers funny Hot Dog Days My San Francisco Chronicles observation rant

Karma’s a bitch.

Yes, karma’s a bitch. And here’s a story to teach you about this statement:

Yesterday, I worked a full day from 9:30am-7pm. I think working seven days straight with no day off finally caught up to me in the afternoon because I felt a bit cranky with some customers then. So, this guy comes along, parks his car in the spot behind me, and then proceeds to bug me for dollar bills and quarters. At that point, I was low on dollar bills and was not in the mood to have someone bugging me for quarters. He was persistent (and rather rude), but I stood my ground. Finally, he “gave in” and bought a bottle of water from me so to “force” me to give him change (what a way to phrase the situation, huh?)

He bought his water, I gave him his change rather begrudgingly, and he filled up his meter. I guess he needed more quarters afterwards (more than $1.50 worth!) and asked for more quarters. I felt really annoyed with him at this point so I shoved the quarters into his hands with no smile. Come on, give me a break, seriously. This is a BUSINESS, not a change machine, dude. No thanks or anything from him.

The guy ended up leaving to go shopping after awhile; I was so tempted to do something to his car since it looked shiny and new. But I resisted the temptation since I felt I could never be so evil to do such a thing to someone’s car. So I forgot about the guy and went on to do my usual duties.

I don’t know how much longer afterwards, but there was a bit of commotion in the area due to some guy jumping off a building nearby (I was completely oblivious to this, fortunately?). Two parking officers came by and were trying to clear the lane behind me for traffic to get through; the female officer stopped and looked at the guy’s car parked behind me. She proceeded to punch in his license plate/make into her little machine; I thought at first she was going to give the guy a ticket. But after awhile, I noticed she was not leaving right away and was sticking around for quite some time.

I was already feeling some sort of victory over the guy with the thought that he was probably getting a ticket. Then, a tow truck stopped in front of the guy’s car and the tow truck guy came out and asked if the car was mine. Well, gee sir, yes it is my car, and I am going to let you tow it away right now…..(sarcasm). Anyway, so the tow truck guy proceeds to prepare the quarter-hoarding guy’s car for towing away; meanwhile, throughout this whole ordeal, I was laughing to myself inside. I could not believe this was happening; the guy was getting his car towed, and the tow truck incident pretty much made my day 10x better.

The car was towed away after awhile, and finally I felt relaxed. The quarter guy comes back much later and looks confused. “What happened to the car that was parked here?”

“Oh, it was towed away.”

“But…they didn’t see the parking meter!”

“Well…the parking officers said no parking in general in this area.”

The guy looked confused for a few minutes more, then he walked away to call someone. In some ways, I felt a little bad for him, but in other ways, I felt like my evil laughter inside was justified. That’s what you get for harassing someone for quarters. Yes, karma’s a bitch.

I will probably be struck down for laughing about this later on, but right now, I’m still feeling amused by the situation.