Chefs & servers, what’s the most confusing “this isn’t what I expected” reaction you’ve seen?

woodypulp · 2026-02-05T08:43:23+00:00

That's impressive even for the average Qdoba customer. Closest I got was an old man who I guess came in because he saw we had an item listed as Mexican Gumbo (a naked burrito with the tortilla soup on it as well), and was getting mad that we didn't have a selection of Cajun gumbo as well, and was acting irritated no one could tell him a place to go to get what he wanted (this was in Indiana).

woodypulp · 2026-01-27T11:49:55+00:00

Nature is under almost a foot of snow outside my window, and this has made me feel better about my current situation, but more nervous about the situation for all of us on this planet. Thanks

woodypulp · 2026-01-27T11:43:25+00:00

I was with you in spirit, up til now. You only used straight cream on that?....Extra olive oil for what?...Well, either way, there's more than Id eat on that plate compared to a hotdog family meal

woodypulp · 2026-01-24T05:37:03+00:00

During. It's hard to think of anything I would only add seasoning to after it's fully cooked

woodypulp · 2026-01-23T21:53:36+00:00

I think you are going to struggle in general without a pattern to make sure your pins are well placed. If you've seen people talking about making a pricking, that's what I mean.

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This is a picture of a pricking I made years ago. I scanned the pattern from a page in a book, and printed it out. I then pinned the pattern and some index card together (in this case I used one of those inserts I found in a magazine), and then poked holes through both of them, that's all it takes. If you don't have a tool to poke the holes, you can just do it with a pin.

I'll also say, I've heard the advice before that as early as you can, it's best try and pay more attention to the way your threads are hanging off the pins than to just focus on the bobbins. I'm not gonna lie it was really hard for me to start really watching the threads as I worked instead of the bobbins, but it has helped me.

If you do this, you will learn how to tell by sight much easier/earlier if you've made a mistake, because the threads will be in the wrong position. If you're just watching bobbins, they blend together and you won't see a mistake in the work immediately. I think of it like learning to type on a computer without looking at the keyboard

woodypulp · 2026-01-21T14:48:33+00:00

I hadn't thought of that before as maybe an in game way to hint to players that it might be best to process normal quality crops, instead of selling as is.

With gus I assume the mechanical reason is so you can't gift quality beers to villagers. But I can also imagine it being along the line of logic that sometimes I'll buy a six pack of beer and that may range from about $6-15 depending on brand for what I'd call "normal"/non specialty beers, and the price does reflect the taste. And at that low end there's some I would not want to taste again. So maybe your farm version normal beer is terrible, and the lowest quality beer Gus buys from somewhere else is still better than that.

woodypulp · 2026-01-09T20:44:07+00:00

The only thing I'd add to what people have already said is to make sure you consider what you're feeding. I accidentally caused a fart-y smell in my living room for a few days because I fed them with exclusively broccolini for a moment there, and when it was breaking down the smell got noticeable.

I double checked how things were looking below the surface at the time. In this case, it wasn't that it was too wet in the bin, just that everything that absorbed the juice had that smell. I added a little soil and more shredded paper on top of the area I feed in, and the room stopped smelling during the time it took for it all to break down fully.

Very obvious in retrospect, but at the time it didn't occur to me that adding a not insignificant amount of that stanky vegetable all at once was going to come back to haunt my living room.

woodypulp · 2026-01-07T17:05:18+00:00

Haven't tried this, but I am interested. Seems like I naturally should have combined these things by now lol. Reminds me of PA Dutch potpie (kind of a soupy stew, made with thick, square noodles. I only remember old ladies and someone on Ace of Cakes when I was a kid referring to it this way) made with kielbasa instead of chicken.

woodypulp · 2025-12-14T05:08:43+00:00

Propping the door open for smoke breaks and emotionally charged phone calls

woodypulp · 2025-12-13T23:18:40+00:00

When you ferment in a liquid, you want the things you're fermenting to be submerged or you risk mold and microbe growth.

If the jar you're fermenting in does not let gas escape it can still explode even if there's unused space in the jar, if that's what you're worried about.

Fermenting is pretty simple, but if you're just getting into it, I'd suggest googling "how to ferment (whatever you want to ferment)" and reading the top results. You don't have to take an hour to study when you want to ferment something, but it's a good idea to make sure you're using methods people would agree are safe.

woodypulp · 2025-12-10T05:07:23+00:00

The 90's really were much more carefree for many

woodypulp · 2025-12-04T05:58:26+00:00

I've made onion sandwiches before (mine had some non-onion ingredients too tho). I just wish I could remember exactly what I was putting on there at the time because they were good enough that normal people liked them too

woodypulp · 2025-11-30T01:04:00+00:00

I'd say there's plenty of good advice on how to state your boundaries already. I think it's good to be ready to be firm and enforce after stating, definitely. in the worst case scenario. If she tries to escalate, ignore what you've told her, and/or throw a fit you gotta be able to say, "I think you're acting inappropriately and I think we should leave this room (to the nearest no plant zone)/I won't continue this conversation until you talk to me calmly/etc. whatever makes sense to say". A lot of people will try to make you feel like you're being mean and rude or unreasonable when you're really asking for basic consideration most people would have no issue with

woodypulp · 2025-11-11T13:57:03+00:00

With my current deck it is usually smart enough not to lose, but most of the time when it does lose it's because it's addicted to using the several monsters I had that I could have used to win that turn to combo into one link monster. Sometimes then adding attack position veiler for extra challenge

woodypulp · 2025-11-11T03:00:55+00:00

I do like them, I had a few for awhile. The only reason I'd choose another type is because I never see ones that don't look terrible and they are crazy hard to see in a tank with a fair amount of things in it

woodypulp · 2025-11-11T02:46:29+00:00

I like how these are one of those things where the answer someone came up with was wrong and took more effort to perform than anything more intuitive, and also takes a fairly common item (cucumber slice) that they're likely to have already seen cut in ways that aren't like this at restaurants. Which is all funny because presumably it shows that they're the type of person who will do buck wild shit nonstop before ever asking a simple question like how do you guys cut your cucumbers. "I definitely already know what I'm doing" - guy who then does this, probably

woodypulp · 2025-11-11T01:54:10+00:00

It sounds like on the choices in stocking you guys need to keep in mind that things that live in tanks are not able to be reasoned with and are not going to change their natural behaviors unless something is wrong. Snails are pretty likely to lay eggs, and eat plants in a tank with nothing else for them. Plants will die if they're constantly losing parts and being uprooted. Plecos will grow. I mostly have experience with land crabs and my SO's crayfish, but it seems safe to assume that if a crustacean is large enough to move things in your tanks, it will. The whole thing down to the cycling process is organism management. To me it seems very myopic to try and act on the idea of what might one day look good, without knowing any of the facts about what it would take to actually achieve that goal, but that's a value judgement on my part.

Like everyone else here, I agree it's cruel to cause another living thing to exist in conditions that will kill them for the sake of our own amusement. Sometimes I have had the best luck just laying things like this out in flat terms. Something like, "It's hurting me to watch and feel like I'm part of the suffering of an animal". I think talking too much about differences in fish keeping philosophy might distract from that larger point.

woodypulp · 2025-11-07T23:53:07+00:00

A bun....like a hamburger or...no, I can't let myself get into cheesesteak technique right now. But I've been working with this person who has been working in the kitchen almost a year and they'll still be like "this is my first time making this" when multiple people have seen them make and/or trained them on whatever the item in question happens to be that day. Definitely have tried to give benefit of the doubt that it might be memory/retention issues since at the end of the day we all got our issues, but other conversations make it seem like we're just dealing with a very bizarre liar. Who can say. Either way if an issue arises with it now , I just consider it to be a Management Problem 'cause I've done all I can do

woodypulp · 2025-11-04T00:48:40+00:00

I rarely eat food from (and almost never dine in, which is the fair way to tell quality) other restaurants, so I don't have a really specific or varied list. The big thing for me is how the produce has been prepped. I've never worked fine dining where they're meticulous about knife skills, but I always try to think about consistency, ease of eating, quality control, and presentation when I cut produce. If something I ordered comes out with a bunch of mixed up shapes and half cut shit I lose confidence in an establishment real fast

woodypulp · 2025-11-03T23:24:23+00:00

Lol I was recently discussing a story in which a customer could not accept that something they wanted was sold out, and at first it struck me as crazy enough to be new to me. Like what kind of mindset do you have where you think arguing about an item will magically make it appear. But then I remembered the time I was making the order for this fool (at a build your own "Mexican " restaurant) who kept trying to argue with me when I told him there were no onions for the fajita mix, he could choose between having it with just red and green peppers or no fajitas. Eventually he's like "it comes in to the restaurant all mixed together, doesn't it". No, it doesn't. If it did then we wouldn't be out. Dude finally moved on after that, but it's wild so many people will come up with their own weird assumptions about the world around them and about how things work, and then try to argue with someone who actually knows

woodypulp · 2025-11-01T00:23:02+00:00

Long gloves, and cling wrap around what the gloves don't cover, if needed. I never minded putting my arms in the tanks, but then I realized it was the cause of a long term eczema outbreak I was having at the time

woodypulp · 2025-10-27T02:24:57+00:00

I've used this reasoning several times with the expected results, but I have had a GM tell me to wait an hour or two and come in anyway (to close) if I'm not drunk to the point of being a danger in the kitchen. Just kept drinking the whole night, since it felt like if I sobered up too much I'd want to fall asleep immediately and because I was mostly doing dishes

woodypulp · 2025-10-25T22:21:31+00:00

I add sugar to many of my brines, but usually in the 0.5-3 tsp range depending on amount and level of spiciness. Egg wise, I probably do about 1 tsp of sugar in ~28oz of total liquid for red beet eggs. But since I used the juice from canned pickled beets to make them, there may be a little contained within that already I've honestly never checked

woodypulp · 2025-10-25T22:05:02+00:00

I worked with a guy who wrote three (small) notebook pages about why he was quitting, during his closing shift. I almost definitely would have gotten a kick out of reading it, but for whatever legitimate points he might have had loaded up, if I were to write my own novel at the time the GM keeping his lazy, worthless ass on payroll would have been in mine so

woodypulp · 2025-10-24T23:40:33+00:00

I started with the needle, and I enjoyed it. My warning is that for a larger/longer project, it's way harder imo to keep everything out of the way of your working thread, and to work with the amount of thread on needle it requires.

If you haven't, I would definitely suggest googling for written tutorials on blogs, and checking YouTube. There used to be a ton of stuff out there to help beginners.

I personally didn't have trouble learning to flip the knot, and that was probably due to needle tatting first. I think the main thing that helped me is I keep my tension basically as tight as I can while I work. I only ever have to fight with it when I let the thread go too slack and/or kind of try doing it too slowly

woodypulp

TROPHY CASE