I had an idea for a bigger post about this, but I guess I should start with an introduction about it before I dive in. The best way to describe it would be to dramatically misuse this Hamilton lyric:
“I don’t pretend to know
The challenges you’re facing
The worlds you keep erasing and creating in your mind”
I’ve never really had a world to my own to play in. For a while, I just borrowed other authors’ worlds. Fanfiction, especially when ignoring canon characters and only using their world, is very liberating in that respect. Occasionally I still toy around with single paragraphs in these worlds. I only stopped because I got frustrated never truly finishing anything before moving on.
Well, I say “I never had my own world,” but that wasn’t for lack of trying. At the very least, I’ve always tried to add in old, unused bits of worldbuilding into whatever fragment of writing I do. Maybe it’s just a newspaper name -- The <City Name> Daily Comet is a particular favorite -- maybe it’s a historical event I can mention in narration. But it still never felt like a world until I put a name to it.
Enter Naviim.
So maybe this wasn’t the most productive post in terms of elaborating on its title. I spent more time about me than the world that’s slowly become mine. But like the “Part One” in the title implies, I’m not done writing about this just yet. It just might take a little longer to get there.
-F
Tuesday, January 30, 2018
Tuesday, January 23, 2018
Too Much Expo-Kitchen
I’ll say it again: I work at a restaurant in real life. I sell noodles and noodle-related accessories. Broadly, that’s my job. But just saying, “I work at a restaurant” is incredibly unspecific. But to be more specific is… complicated.
There are three primary jobs I can do inside the restaurant. I can be a cashier, work a job called “Expo,” and I can work in the kitchen. And there are three primary personas I have, one for each job. While on a register, I like to think that I’m very friendly, I interact with customers well, and I have a joke I tell customers: “If you enjoyed our service, my name is F___. If not, well, my name is Scott.” It’s not very funny, but it makes them laugh.
When I’m in the kitchen, I’m the opposite. More customers means more work, and I’m not a fan of more work. The worst customer, when I’m in the kitchen, is one woman whose order contains four pieces of grilled chicken and twenty meatballs. Chickens take three minutes to cook, but at least I can do all four at once. To order twenty meatballs probably means that I have to restock meatballs afterwards or worse, even during the cooking process. This, compounded by the fact that the customer also orders two buttered noodles, which I’m also in charge of, as well as when she comes in, which is frequently during the middle of a dinner rush.
Expo is somewhere in the middle. I’m in charge of making sure customers get their food on time, whether that be finishing up food passed down from the kitchen to making sure the kitchen sends up food at all. I also tend to end up running our third register, so some of that personality leaks through as well. Here, customers are a little bit of a nuisance -- I have a lot to do to get the area ready for the next shift/to close out the night -- but generally are fine. I still actively help them.
This also extends to my coworker/customer interactions. I wouldn’t say I’m myself with my coworkers; perhaps because of the high turnover rate of a low-wage job, I don’t have a lot of time to get to know them. Again, customers always see the best of me. At least, when I’m not dropping food on them.
I’m not sure what this says about me. I imagine this happens to everyone, but I guess I don’t know. I only know about myself.
-F
There are three primary jobs I can do inside the restaurant. I can be a cashier, work a job called “Expo,” and I can work in the kitchen. And there are three primary personas I have, one for each job. While on a register, I like to think that I’m very friendly, I interact with customers well, and I have a joke I tell customers: “If you enjoyed our service, my name is F___. If not, well, my name is Scott.” It’s not very funny, but it makes them laugh.
When I’m in the kitchen, I’m the opposite. More customers means more work, and I’m not a fan of more work. The worst customer, when I’m in the kitchen, is one woman whose order contains four pieces of grilled chicken and twenty meatballs. Chickens take three minutes to cook, but at least I can do all four at once. To order twenty meatballs probably means that I have to restock meatballs afterwards or worse, even during the cooking process. This, compounded by the fact that the customer also orders two buttered noodles, which I’m also in charge of, as well as when she comes in, which is frequently during the middle of a dinner rush.
Expo is somewhere in the middle. I’m in charge of making sure customers get their food on time, whether that be finishing up food passed down from the kitchen to making sure the kitchen sends up food at all. I also tend to end up running our third register, so some of that personality leaks through as well. Here, customers are a little bit of a nuisance -- I have a lot to do to get the area ready for the next shift/to close out the night -- but generally are fine. I still actively help them.
This also extends to my coworker/customer interactions. I wouldn’t say I’m myself with my coworkers; perhaps because of the high turnover rate of a low-wage job, I don’t have a lot of time to get to know them. Again, customers always see the best of me. At least, when I’m not dropping food on them.
I’m not sure what this says about me. I imagine this happens to everyone, but I guess I don’t know. I only know about myself.
-F
Tuesday, January 16, 2018
Corner-Call
I’m not really a writer, I just play one on TV. In real life, I work at one of those restaurants that claims to be a middle-of-the-road sit-down restaurant with globalized leanings and customer-focused values. We even sold wine and beer, once upon a time.
It’s a fast-food chain. A nicer one, but it’s still a fast food chain. Orders go out in six minutes or less, and if they don’t, well, I’m not high up enough to know what happens if we don’t. So we move fast. And, because the majority of us are teenagers or just-past-teenagers, we don’t have much awareness of the people around us. And because of that, we bump into each other quite a lot.
There’s a blind corner separating the back of the open kitchen from the dishwashing area, which also has a freezer and a whole rack of cleaning supplies and extra plastic dishes. Every other area in the restaurant is open, but this corner is only one person wide. So we all bump into each other.
We keep knives in the back. I personally haven’t seen any accidents in the transport of knives from back to kitchen, but I have to imagine they’ve happened.
So we have a system. When you approach the corner, you yell, “CORNER!” and if you hear someone yell “CORNER!” you get out of the way. And that works. Though, I’ve noticed that the longer a person works at this restaurant, the quieter they get about it. All of the managers, save maybe one, just say “corner,” if they say it at all. Hell, I’ve worked there a year, and while, when I do say it, I yell it, I don’t always say it. And we haven’t been really training new hires to say it like we used to when I started.
So now, I guess, we just have to wait until the inevitable accident happens.
-F
It’s a fast-food chain. A nicer one, but it’s still a fast food chain. Orders go out in six minutes or less, and if they don’t, well, I’m not high up enough to know what happens if we don’t. So we move fast. And, because the majority of us are teenagers or just-past-teenagers, we don’t have much awareness of the people around us. And because of that, we bump into each other quite a lot.
There’s a blind corner separating the back of the open kitchen from the dishwashing area, which also has a freezer and a whole rack of cleaning supplies and extra plastic dishes. Every other area in the restaurant is open, but this corner is only one person wide. So we all bump into each other.
We keep knives in the back. I personally haven’t seen any accidents in the transport of knives from back to kitchen, but I have to imagine they’ve happened.
So we have a system. When you approach the corner, you yell, “CORNER!” and if you hear someone yell “CORNER!” you get out of the way. And that works. Though, I’ve noticed that the longer a person works at this restaurant, the quieter they get about it. All of the managers, save maybe one, just say “corner,” if they say it at all. Hell, I’ve worked there a year, and while, when I do say it, I yell it, I don’t always say it. And we haven’t been really training new hires to say it like we used to when I started.
So now, I guess, we just have to wait until the inevitable accident happens.
-F
Tuesday, January 9, 2018
Introduction (Part Two)
If I had another go at introducing myself, I probably would have talked more about the experiences of being an introvert. As a writer, or at least an aspiring one, I’m of two minds about this sort of disposition. On one hand, it is wonderful to drift off between a pair of headphones and a computer screen, not interacting with anybody or anything more than I have to while typing away at a new story or an old story or whatever else I’m working on at the moment. On the other hand, I’ve become increasingly more aware of the “off” time that still goes into the creation process. Specifically, I mean interacting with readers.
Horror stories have been written about this. Harlan Ellison wrote a particularly vivid one involving a cup of someone’s vomit. Hell, Stephen King’s Misery is a case study in poor reader interaction. But those are obviously extremes. I’m more worried about lines upon lines of people all wanting to speak with me on a one-on-one fashion.
I remember all the author signings I’ve been to, and all the different ways artists have interacted with me. Most of them just signed the book and waved me on, but that’s a little too spartan for me. Others spoke individually with each and every person who came up. And that has to be exhausting for them too, right? Ignoring the physical strain of sitting one moment then getting up for a picture, or even injuring your wrist from the strain, isn’t that tiresome to ask the same questions over and over to each and every person that comes up?
I don’t know. These aren’t questions you’re supposed to ask until you have something to show for it. But it’s still something I think about, right before I plug back in and go back to sculpting my own little world.
-F
Horror stories have been written about this. Harlan Ellison wrote a particularly vivid one involving a cup of someone’s vomit. Hell, Stephen King’s Misery is a case study in poor reader interaction. But those are obviously extremes. I’m more worried about lines upon lines of people all wanting to speak with me on a one-on-one fashion.
I remember all the author signings I’ve been to, and all the different ways artists have interacted with me. Most of them just signed the book and waved me on, but that’s a little too spartan for me. Others spoke individually with each and every person who came up. And that has to be exhausting for them too, right? Ignoring the physical strain of sitting one moment then getting up for a picture, or even injuring your wrist from the strain, isn’t that tiresome to ask the same questions over and over to each and every person that comes up?
I don’t know. These aren’t questions you’re supposed to ask until you have something to show for it. But it’s still something I think about, right before I plug back in and go back to sculpting my own little world.
-F
Monday, January 1, 2018
Introduction
I've never been good at introductions. I'm an introvert already, so that rules out the public kind -- the kind where you shake hands and/or hug and say how nice it is to meet someone. And, for perhaps the same reason, I've never been good at the online kind either. So, um, hi!
So, first things first, this is a Tuesday blog, or at least it hopes to be. That isn't to say that there won't be delays, but the reason I created this blog in the first place was to challenge myself. There are those out there who manage to update some website or another three times a week, or sometimes even more, but I wasn't sure I would be able to handle that sort of commitment given my anticipated work schedule. One a week, though, should be easy enough.
I don't really have a theme as of yet, and I don't really have any sort of plan. This was kind of a spontaneous New Year's Resolution between Secret Asian Man and I to keep each other motivated. He, obviously, has his travel life going for him. I, unfortunately, do not share that luxury. What I'm left with, then, is an insatiable desire to create, and this blog will hopefully serve as that outlet.
I hope you all enjoy!
-F
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