The Tree Salad

The young, skinny waitress with a buzz cut came to take our order. Yang tells her we will have “the tree salad” and she says she doesn’t know what that is. I point at the menu and she copies down the Chinese characters for “the tree salad”. It is slightly odd that she doesn’t know what “the tree salad” is since this particular pizza joint is called “The Tree”. It was the buzz cut waitress’s first day on the job. Later, after she had a hard time knowing what a Guinness was and knowing what a diet coke was an experienced slender buzz cut waitress came to help her out.

The thing about starting a new job is you don’t know what you don’t know and the people you work with don’t know what you do know. This causes multiple instances of looking like or at least feeling like an idiot. It’s just part of the deal.

I was having pizza with Yang as a night out after my first week in an office after 14 months of being at home, sometimes working, sometimes not. It was an exhausting week not so much because I worked so many hours but because of not knowing anything. That will change and then the work will be exhausting because of the knowing.