Aich was waitressing the other day when a customer, (an older man) enters the cafe and casually says ,
「ホットください。」
Now, looking at all the facts, Ai-chan is waitressing at a coffee shop, and naturally coffee is served. So the request for 「ホット」really could only mean that he wanted a hot coffee,...or a hot cup of tea. BUT! Either the question was instantaneously translated to English in Ai-chan's mind as, "One hot please", or "I want it hot", or "Make that a hot", or Aich was thinking about something...funny, it came as a shocker, and she was stunned for a few moments. "Wha? Hot? Sorry, we don't have that on the menu." More like, we don't do happy services here. Buh-bye!
And while waitressing today, the same thing happened to me. An older man walks in and sits down at table 5. I bring him a glass of water and the menu, but before I could offer the menu to him, he made it very clear what he wanted in one word. 「ホット」And I'm like, sure! With a waitress smile plastered on my face.
「少々お待ちくださいませ。」
He wants it hot...riight.
But who doesn't, coffee or otherwise?
And all this reminds me of the time when I was working at オムライス亭. My senpais thought me and Boris were so cool cuz we could speak English. and they would often try to communicate with us using all the little High school English that they knew. Yuta, (the cuter one of the two) desperately wanted a melon soda, and we had just finished talking about how they would be totally irresistible if they were fluent in English.
「永子、プリーズ・ミー・メロン・ソーダー」
Now, of course I understood exactly what he wanted, (a melon soda) but somehow my mind didn't really catch the 'melon soda' part of the incorrect phrase, which left me with, "Eiko, please me." Grammatically speaking, "Eiko, please me", is correct, and "Eiko, please me melon soda" is not. Yet somehow the correct sentence was a just a tad bit disturbing. I carefully explained what 'please me' could mean to Yuta. He smiled kind of bashfully, with a, 「あっ、そっかー」and continued to purposefully make the 'please me' mistake whenever he wanted...well anything.
Aaanyhow.
The cafe is running smoothly. We've got plenty of room for improvement, but improvement is happening everyday, and that means progress. The baking side of things is going pretty smoothly. The baked stuff really sold well yesterday and the day before, and consequently, that meant staying up late baking for the next day. It's a good feeling though, when you know that the customers like what they taste to the point that they keep ordering more and more,...until well, I have to put up the 'sold out' sign.
That's it for now.
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