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Tip #11 on Being a Good Bar Customer

8 Nov

Okay, so, I know I just did this but when it rains it pours, right?  If you want to check out the vintage tips, here are the links: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine and ten.  Share them if you have some badly behaving friends.  Or if you like to judge badly behaving people.  Or if you just think it’s funny.  Or not at all.  Whatever.  I’m not the boss of you.

So at this point some of you are probably all “this girl hates people and bartending and maybe she should just get a new job.”  You can feel free to think that.  Personally, I think I am doing a public service on behalf of all the other drink slingers who are annoyed by poorly mannered patrons.  I am also a firm believer that when someone is acting like an asshat, the rest of us can feel free to judge them, and even have a few laughs at their expense, without feeling bad about it.  So, without further ado, another bit of free advice from yours truly.  Unless of course you’d like to pay me.  In which case, yes please can you email me immediately?!

So I am not a person who really likes to be touched.  When everyone else is hugging and cheek-kissing and all that stuff, I have my arm outstretched in front of my body and my hand furiously moving about in an enthusiastic wave.  I find that if I approach it this way, I am able to create a friendly barrier.  It’s like, yea, I like you, I will happily interact with you, but only when you are at least 2 feet away from me.  The outstretched arm is sort of like the enforcer of my invisible force field.  And that is with people I know.  If I don’t know you, don’t touch me.  Seriously.  I will curl myself into the smallest possible version of myself in all public circumstances in order to avoid any inadvertent bodily contact.  I am not a hand holder, not a snuggler, not a fan of massages. So now that I have scared all my friends and have them all thinking

“oh my god I think I maybe gave her a hug once?  Does she hate me?!”

I will continue with the tip.  But only after I say this: it’s cool, friends, you can hug me.  You’ve passed the test.  Whatever that means.

So, the tip. I am aware that I am especially weird about touching, but I think I can speak for bartenders the world over when I say to you: do not touch your bartender.  Seriously.  Remember that lesson you learned in pre-school?  You know, use your words?  That also applies to ordering drinks.  You have a voice.  We have ears.  Let’s make this work.  So last night, when I was in the middle of a short conversation, one of my customers reached over the bar and poked me in the arm.  He had been standing at the bar waiting for me for approximately 15 seconds.  I know this because I saw him walk over, looked at him and smiled in the “I’ll be with you in a second” sort of a way. And then, because apparently waiting is so incredibly difficult especially when you have probably already had too many drinks, he poked me.  In the arm.  With his stupid index finger.  I would not wish the glare I gave him on my worst enemy.

So maybe this doesn’t seem like a big deal to some of you but it really is.  Being behind the bar is like being in a safe zone.  As bartenders, we are protected by the expansive piece of wood that separates us from the clientele.  Just imagine when you look at the bar that there is this invisible wall through which sound passes, through which drinks and currency pass, but through which your hands cannot travel.  Just because we are giving you drinks and laughing at your jokes does not make us public property.  We do not belong to you.

Okay, so, imagine that you are like, a computer tech person.  You are one of those people that answers phone calls from people like me.  People who know nothing about technology and need all the help all the time for the stupidest things.  And let’s say that I have called you and I am on hold while you are trying to help some other technologically-challenged person.  But let’s just say, for the sake of this tip, that I got impatient and I possessed the power, just like in the cartoons, to reach my hand through the phone and poke you on the arm to get your attention.  That would be shocking, right?  And not just because I had achieved a feat that previously seemed impossible. It would also be shocking because you’d be like,

“here I am, sitting at my desk doing my job and that asshole just reached through the phone and poked me on the shoulder!  With her stupid index finger!”

And you know what?  Your reaction would be absolutely justified because I should keep my hands to myself.  So just think about it this way.  The bar, it is like my desk.  You are the technologically-challenged person on the other end of the phone.  The space in between us is sort of like a phone cord.  Imagine that it is impossible for you to touch me.  Because here’s the thing.  I know that you are at the bar with your friends having fun, but that doesn’t make it any less of a job for me.  I am not your drinking buddy.  I am helping you fill a need.  The need for more alcohol.  It is, although it might not seem this way to you, a professional interaction.  I am a professional.  And you don’t touch professionals.

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Rebekah… Shalom.

5 Nov

So one of the things about tending bar (that rejiggering of words is for you and your hoity-toity preferences, Ben) is that you have to deal with The Public.  Tending bar is not the only profession in which this is the case, obviously.  I could work for the Department of Motor Vehicles, say.  Or I could work in a retail store, as a police officer, or perhaps be a park ranger.  Although in some of these other professions I might be forced to deal with The Public while they are under the influence on occasion, as a provider of liquor the odds of my dealing with slightly to majorly intoxicated people increases exponentially.  It just goes along with the territory.  Sometimes, this is both horrifying and funny, like the time that I was accused by a legitimately crazy man of stealing his Budweiser when I confiscated it after he attempted to drink it on Atlantic Avenue right in front of my bar while mounting his bicycle.  Other times, I am threatened with violence like the time this really small lady attempted to punch me over the bar after drinking her weight in Brooklyn Lager.  And occasionally, it results in me attempting to break up a Fireman brawl by dousing them all with water and the only result is confused/angry Firemen and a soaked coworker.  When I walk into work I never know what sort of events the day might bring.  What I do know is that I will have to, at some point, deal with some incredibly annoying people.  And that is where this story begins.

As a quick aside let me just say that most of my customers are really great.  They teach me all kinds of things.  They make me laugh.  They gossip with me about the neighborhood staples.  They ask me, over and over again, what I plan on doing with me recently acquired degree.  (The answer, still, is that I will do something…eventually.  Just as soon as I figure out what that something is.  I’m fairly convinced that I’ll know it when I see it.)  Sometimes, they even become my real life friends.  Some of my customers, though, are really hard to deal with.  I don’t know if they are really lonely or if they don’t understand what the word “interesting” means or if maybe they make a sport out of seeing how many times they can make me raise my left eyebrow or cause my eyes to glaze over due to complete and total boredom.  I mean, these people are skilled.  There is one person in particular who fits this mold.  I will call him Tim.

This is a customer who has annoyed me late night pretty consistently for at least 2 years.  He turns up right when I think I’m safe.  Sometimes he’s alone, sometimes he brings in people who are way too drunk for me to serve and then he tries to secretly buy them drinks.  Other times he stands in the corner for prolonged periods of time and weeps.  (Okay, that only happened once but it was very bizarre.)  What he always does, every time, is talk a lot and say very, very little.  On a recent evening he came into the bar and asked me literally a half a dozen times in a 10 minute period what was new.  Finally I got frustrated and said to him,

Nothing.  Nothing is new.  So if you want to ask me again in the future what is new, I would like you to refer back to my previous responses of nothing.  Save us both some time.

Then something amazing happened.  For the first time ever in the history of me and Tim interacting on any level whatsoever, he took the hint.  He realized he was annoying me.  It was a revelation.  He gave me a big, final-seeming salute and marched his way out the door never to be seen again.  Or so I thought.

The following night, much to my dismay, Tim was back!  My coworker and I were absolutely shocked by this unexpected turn of events. I approached him and asked him if he wanted a beer.  He ordered a Heineken.  And then the following interaction occurred:

Tim, while staring at me with a very odd expression: I was told today that you are a member of The Tribe.

After a pause of about 30 seconds in which I stared back at Tim with my head cocked to the side in confusion sort of like a small puppy he continued.

Tim:  Do you know what I mean when I say you are a member of The Tribe?
Me:  Yes.  I am just trying to figure out under what circumstances my religion would come up in conversation.
Tim: No, it’s good.  You know what? I have never met a Jewish bartender before!  This is just great!  I mean, this is breaking down barriers!
Me:  Um…? I’m sorry.  You’ve never met…
Tim: You know, I went into a bar nearby and tried to get a job and they wouldn’t hire me.
Me:  I don’t think that had anything to do with the fact that you are Jewish (I wanted to add that I could think of a few other reasons but I thought that unnecessarily rude.)

At this moment, thankfully, some other customers came in and I was able to abandon my conversation with Tim and go about my evening.  Eventually, seeing that we weren’t going to discuss the Torah or sing the Hava Nagila, Tim went on his way to, I can only imagine, torment some other non-Jewish bartender in close proximity.

Fast forward about 2 hours.

The owner of a nearby bar (and a friend and occasional blog reader and commenter under the assumed email “OBTampons”) walked in, sat at the bar, ordered a Bud Lite and decided to unload his guilt.

OB Tampons: I think I might have done something wrong.  I told Tim you were Jewish

Well, at least the mystery was solved.  After a bit of verbal berating I decided to just accept my lot in life.  I was stuck with Tim.  I would just have to deal with the unavoidable face-melting at some point every single Thursday night for the rest of the foreseeable future.  But the thing was that on this particular week I was working two night shifts in a row.  And wouldn’t you know it, the next night at 9:30pm, a little earlier than usual, in walked Tim. He ordered a Heineken from my coworker (but not until she checked with me to make sure I serve him because “he seemed like a person I wouldn’t serve..” She clearly knows me too well).  I walked over a few minutes later to check and see if he needed something else and he looked at me, with a very serious expression and said,

Rebekah…Shalom.

He promptly walked out into the night.  My life.  Sometimes it is just too much.

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Tip #10 on Being a Good Bar Customer

22 Oct

Here it is. Your favorite FranklyRebekah series! To be honest, the only FranklyRebekah series but that doesn’t make it any less exciting, it just perhaps decreases the level of competition involved. If you missed them, or you want to be reminded of them, here are the other 9 previous bartender tips. Read, enjoy, share: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight and nine.

This entry actually has an alternative title: My NEDmesis. I generally try not to call people out by name on my blog, but that alternative title is just too clever and funny to pass up. No one really knows who this guy is, anyway. Except for him. And he doesn’t read my blog.

Personally I am an adherent to moderation.  Well, generally speaking.  Every now and again we all get a little too crazy, don’t eat enough snacks, and end up toppling over while trying to crouch at the subway station.  It happens.  And I won’t begrudge people the occasional sloppiness.  Or even regular sloppiness so long as said sloppiness doesn’t result in someone (a) becoming an asshole or (b) vomiting everywhere.  I think I have addressed people being assholes before.  Vomiting, however, is an unfortunate mainstay at any drinking establishment and also something that totally sucks, both for the vomiter and for the people responsible for cleaning up said vomit.  (At this point I have to give a shout out to my friend and co-worker, Sasha, who always cleans up the vomit.  You are my hero.)

Sometimes, as I mentioned before, drunkeness creeps up on a person.  By and large the older we get, the less we allow ourselves to get to the point of vomiting.  We come up with tricks.  We figure out our own signs.  We know when to stop. We drink less.  That or we drink enough that we train our stomachs to keep that liquor in there no matter what.  Not everyone can be so skilled in such an important, and pride-inducing, arena.  Sometimes, though, people vomit.  It sucks but it happens.

So here’s the thing.  If you vomit in the bathroom, or anywhere else in a bar, it is best to leave afterwards.  This is not to say you can’t come back another day but just that maybe the vomiting should be a sign to you that you have already had too much.  Also, vomiting is a sign of weakness and no one wants to be seen as weak.  (That’s sort of a joke.  Maybe it isn’t a sign of weakness but it IS embarrassing.  It smells bad and everyone knows what you had for dinner.)  You should not do what my Nedmesis does.

Okay, so we have this one customer.  He is a short guy.  I am 5’4″ and I would say I have an inch or two on him, easy.  I only mention this because, due to his diminutive stature, and the fact that he only graces us with his presence on days when the bar is absolutely packed with law students (these are my favorite days), he is able to sneak in.  He literally appears out of nowhere.  One second the coast is clear, and the next second, there he is, with beer in hand.  He never orders his own beer so I never know when I am serving him.  I really think he might like, phone in his order to one of his friends and then do a military-style crawl through the door and across the bar in order to avoid detection.  The reason why I like to know when I am serving him is because he oftentimes walks in shit-faced, he does not know when to stop, and once I stop serving him he is really difficult to get rid of.  He’s like a house fly, always buzzing around and nearly impossible to catch.  He also does those three things that people do when they get cut off that drive me crazy:

1. He argues
2. He tries to get other people to buy him drinks as if I won’t notice and is if I won’t snatch the drink from his hand if I catch him with one
3.  He takes drinks off the bar that don’t belong to him and don’t belong to his friends and starts drinking them as if he is the governor of drinks.

All of that is annoying enough but the worst of it is that he drinks enough to end up vomiting on the regular.  And he doesn’t make it to the bathroom.  Nope.  He just stands there, in front of the bar, turns his head to the side, vomits, and then looks at you as if nothing happened.  Sort of like a puppy who just shat on the floor but is trying to let his cuteness make you think that maybe it wasn’t him.  Then when you call him out on it he denies it ever happened as if the evidence isn’t just to his left and also dribbling down his chin.  And then he tries to order another drink!  Like, what?!  Don’t you realize that I will have to clean up that other, regurgitated drink in less than one minute?  But no, he doesn’t think about that.  He argues with me and it goes something like this:

Nedmesis: Ca-I have anooother ber?
Me:  Um, no.  And also I think it is time for you to go home.
Nedmesis: Buh why?
Me: Because you threw up the last beer I gave you.
Nedmesis: Thah wasn meeee.
Me:  So someone in a Ned suit threw up on the floor in order to prevent actual Ned from getting another beer?
Nedmesis: (confused stare) Ca-I have anooother ber?

Rinse and repeat.

I know my logic is perhaps a little bit beyond the abilities of a drunk person, but I sort of can’t help myself.  I also know that I shouldn’t mock someone in a diminished state but when someone gets so fucked up over and over again the only way to not get angry or feel pity is to poke a little fun.  Also, I sort of consider it revenge for the cleaning that I (or Sasha) will have to carry out.  So yea, if you vomit, just leave.  Or if you feel like you might vomit, do it on the street.  Or maybe stop drinking a little earlier.  Don’t vomit on the floor, pretend it wasn’t you, and then try to order another beer.  Don’t also get agitated when, the next time you walk in, I take pause before serving you.  In my mind, once a floor vomiter always a floor vomiter.  As professionals, we have to take certain precautions.

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Thursdays: The Night the Freaks Come Out

9 Aug

Somewhere around midnight one of my Thursday night regulars came in and asked me how my night was going.  I told him I thought there must be a full moon or something because everyone was being really weird.  It was only when he asked me if they were weirder than the week before or the week before that that I realized that every single Thursday night people are weird.  It is the night all the freaks come out.

The night started out normal enough.  Busier than it has been this summer but nothing crazy.  The usual suspects were there, drinking their usual drinks, hanging out with their usual friends, running up their usual tabs.  There was one girl there who I had never seen before who insisted on waving me down (a definite no, no) and ordering from me when my back was turned and then getting insulted when I told her that if I was not facing forward, I was probably not listening to her.  Anyway, she wasn’t weird she was just an asshole.  The actual weirdness didn’t start until sometime around 11.

So there I was at around 11, minding my own business, not paying too much attention to the slowly escalating argument in the booth at the front of the bar when all of a sudden, yelling!  There was a guy in a red and white striped t-shirt, practically standing on his toes as he tried to get in the face of one of our (much taller) regular customers, well call him Kevin.  He said something about it not being all in good fun.  Well, here we go.  I decided that since I tend to stoke the fire rather than put it out, I would let my coworker handle it — hopefully she could get the yelling to stop and figure out what had started it in the first place.  A few minutes later she came back behind the bar and told me, through uncontrollable giggles, what she had found out:  the fight had started over some pockets.

As I am sure many of you know, it can be very difficult to get a straight story out of someone who is really drunk.  They get the order of events all wrong, they sometimes forget the initial question halfway through answering it, they crack nonsensical jokes that are side-splitting to them but make absolutely no sense to anyone else.  After about 45 minutes, I managed to piece the pocket fiasco together.  There are still some holes but here is what I managed to find out.  A group of friends were outside the bar smoking cigarettes and talking.  Kevin, who didn’t know this group and was also outside smoking decided to strike up conversation with them.  Somehow, and I am still unclear as to how this happened, they decided that it would be really funny to “collectively rip the pocket off of Kevin’s t-shirt.”  I don’t really know how people go about collectively ripping someone else’s pocket off, but there you have it.  I actually think that probably it was only one person who ripped the pocket but the girl who told me the story decided she was not a snitch and thought that if they all did it then no one would be held responsible.  In reality, I didn’t really give a shit who ripped the pocket, I just thought it was ridiculous and knew I would want to write a blog about it.  So fast forward about 1/2 hour later, Kevin walked over to one of the guys in this group and decided to exact revenge on behalf of his wounded t-shirt.  He reached across the table and ripped the pocket off this other guy’s shirt.  The problem with this plan was two-fold.  First, the guy whose shirt he ripped was not actually present during the original incident and second, this guy had a bad temper and no sense of humor.  Hence the yelling.  Initially, my coworker managed to diffuse the situation but, drunk people being drunk people, Kevin decided that the best plan of action was to continue to mock bad temper guy for the rest of the evening.  It wasn’t until I informed Kevin that bad temper guy also had no sense of humor and that’s why he was getting so mad that Kevin finally backed off.  Either that or he got distracted by his on-going attempts to unclog the toilet in the men’s bathroom.

Kevin spent a good 1/3 of the night in the men’s bathroom trying to plunge the toilet.  We kept telling him to just leave it, that we would take care of it, but he was a man on a mission.  The best thing about it was that every time someone opened the door to the men’s room, you would get a glimpse of Kevin standing there, plunger in hand, paper towels all over the floor, defeated look on his face as he stared into the bowl.  We concluded that the toilet required a snake.  Kevin would not be swayed from his mission.

But that’s not all!  Sometime after the pocket period, but during the toilet bowl period, some of our other Thursday night regulars came in.  They work nearby and come in after they finish up their shifts, sometime between 1:30 and 2.  Most of them are easy, low key and fun to talk to but one of them is a little bit of a creech so I try to never go out from behind the bar for fear I might be blind-sided by an unwanted hug.  So there I was, hiding behind the bar, when my coworker and I noticed this rather odd smell.  We saw the creech standing there with a recently-extinguished match.  But the smell wasn’t from a match but something much stronger, much stinkier.  And then we were told that the creech decided to light a potato chip on fire to “demonstrate how much oil is in each individual chip.”  I told him that maybe next time he could teach his science lessons outside the bar.

So, that’s basically what happened.  I will leave you all with this one last piece of advice.  Probably don’t get into a debate with someone at 4:45 in the morning about whether Judaism is only a religion, or a religion and en ethnicity.  Especially when that person is driving you home and has a concealed carry permit.

 

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Tip # 9 on Being a Good Bar Customer

8 Aug

And we’re back with more tips, folks!  If you missed the earlier tips and wish to catch up, look no further than the following links.  Tip #1, Tip #2, Tip #3, Tip #4, Tip #5, Tip #6, Tip #7, and Tip #8.  If you wish to share the tips with your bad bar customer friends in a not-so-subtle way, please do!  Let the missteps of others inform our future booze establishment behavior. And now, without further ado, how not to behave if you get 86ed from a bar.

If you end up getting 86ed from a bar, AKA you are never ever allowed to set foot in there ever again, probably you should just never ever set foot in there again.  Obviously, I would advise you all to never behave in such a way as to get yourself 86ed, but if you do, have some pride.  I don’t know much about other cities in the world, but New York City has a lot of bars.  A lot.  There are bars everywhere.  It is easier to get a drink in this city than it is to do a lot of other things that normal people do in their day.  Here are some examples: it is easier to get a drink than mail a letter because there are basically no mailboxes; it is easier to get a drink than to find a public restroom because there are basically no public restrooms; it is easier to get a drink than go to the grocery store, the pharmacy, or the hardware store because, at least in my neighborhood, you pass at least 8 bars en route to almost any of these other destinations.  The point of this is that if you get 86ed from one bar, there are plenty of other bars you can go to unless, of course, you have gotten 86ed from all of them which is a problem I am not prepared to deal with at this time.  If you have been 86ed from All Of The Bars Ever you should probably talk to someone.

Some people who have been 86ed from my bar get it.  This doesn’t mean that they like it, but they understand that once they are refused service for acting like an asshole, they probably should not show their faces there again.  The thing about the people that get it is that generally, in their case, acting up to such a degree as to get kicked out was such an aberration for them that they are ashamed and take a pretty severe detour around the bar whenever they are in the vicinity so as not to have to relive their embarrassment.  Then there are the people who misbehave, get 86ed, and insist on walking by the bar on the regular, peering in the window and mean-mugging.  No joke.  I can think of two solid examples of this type of person: this one guy who online stalked one of my coworkers and the woman who tried to beat me up over the bar.  It’s as if they think that if they stare at the bar often enough, they will put some sort of hex on the bar and either we will go out of business or we all will suddenly be struck by strange cases of amnesia and will forget ever having 86ed them in the first place and they can happily go back to online stalking and bartender threatening.  Finally, there are the people who have been definitively 86ed from the bar and yet continuously try to come back in.  Today I am going to talk about a few of these people but not all of them because, sadly, there are just too damn many of them for one post.

Sometimes you have a really annoying customer who you hate and you really wish that he (I am just going to go with ‘he’ here because statistics!) would do something that would allow you to kick him out for good.  But no.  He walks ever so close to the line without ever crossing it.  He comes in on drugs.  He does not understand the volume of his own voice or that he is incredibly annoying.  He seems to think that “paying for drinks” is a new phenomenon that simply does not apply to him.  He spills his drinks so much that I am forced to erect safety barriers out of coasters.  Sometimes (okay, one time but I like to think it happened over and over again because it is just so damn funny) he tries to sit on a garbage can and the lid breaks and he falls into the garbage can with his legs and arms sticking out of the top of it and everyone leaves him in there for a little while because they are laughing too hard to pull him out.  Anyway, this guy gave me such a headache but there was nothing I could do about it.  I had to serve him.  But then, one day, he got super wasted, somehow got himself buzzed into my coworker’s apartment building, and proceeded to walk up and down the stairs yelling and knocking on every available door in hopes that she would open hers up.  She didn’t.  This went on for over and hour.  He started at 4:15am.  He subsequently got 86ed from the bar.  That was at least 6 months ago.  And still, all these months later, he regularly tries to get back into the bar.  His most recent attempt came at 3pm on a Sunday afternoon.  I was behind the bar, as I generally am at that time, when he walked in.  The second I saw him I started shaking my head no.  He looked back at me with an expression of complete bewilderment. Then he said, “is she here?” referring to the victim of his late night stair climbing rampage. She was, in fact, there.  Before I got a chance to say “it doesn’t really matter if she is here or not, you are not welcome to drink here” my coworker came flying down the bar, finger wagging, sternly repeating “no!” He began to argue, realized there was no point, tried to look defiant and walked out the door.  I doubt this is the last we will see of him.  But here’s the thing.  He isn’t like, an awful guy.  He just can’t drink. He crossed the line.  He followed someone to her home.  It could just be over but no.  He has to continually make our jobs harder and also make himself look like a complete asshole by repeatedly trying to sneak one by us.  Guess what?  We are not stupid.  Also, if you really need your fix of Raspberry Stoli, I am pretty sure I can point you in the direction of a bar that has some.  Basically, in any direction because there are so many bars.

A few days later on a really weird Thursday night (I think there was probably a full moon…there had to have been a full moon) this other annoying guy walked in.  He is another one of those guys that I am just itching to get rid of but he hasn’t done anything bad enough.  Yet.  He always walks in with the worst people because shitty people, I have found, tend to either be complete loners or travel in packs.  They don’t tend to go around with people who are cool.  Anyway, one of the women he walked in with was too drunk for me to serve.  She couldn’t put her elbow on the bar without it sliding off, causing her to almost fall forward off her chair.  She also would not speak to me without having her hand over her mouth, thereby making her thickly slurred speech that much more difficult to understand.  I was so busy arguing with her about how I would not serve her another drink (why does this happen?) that I didn’t even notice that the guy next to her was someone who we kicked out about a year earlier for screaming at one of the owners when she refused to give him another drink because he had already had something like 12 Bud Lights in an hour and could not hold his head up.  And yet he could scream.  Go figure.  Anyway, in the midst of explaining to elbow lady, for the 5th time, that no, she could not have a beer, I noticed that the guy sitting next to her was Angry Bud Lite Guy.  I told him that not only could he also not have a drink, but he was actually not allowed in the bar.  He then started yelling about how he didn’t want a drink and how he hated the bar anyway and would never actually go there.  I pointed out the flaw which was that he was, at that very moment, in the bar.  This did not go over well.  Anyway, yadda, yadda, yadda, he yelled, I stared at him, he yelled, I threatened to call the police, he yelled some more, then one of our other customers who is SO BIG walked over and sat next to do the dude, causing him to immediately flee the scene. (Sometimes bigger is better, it turns out.) But that’s not all!  Angry Bud Lite Guy then pulled his favorite party trick:  call the bar over and over and over again for the rest of the night, asking for the manager every time he calls even though he is already talking to her and complain about how he never misbehaved in the bar, how he never yells (while yelling) and that we are all stupid.  Again, if you want a Bud Lite, go somewhere else.  Seriously.  Keep your drama to yourself and let me do my damn job.  Staying up until 5am sucks enough without your spit landing all over my face while you yell at me about how you never yell.

So, yea, probably don’t get 86ed but if you happen to, just stay away.  We don’t forget.  Also, as I said before, have some damn pride.

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Tip #8 on Being a Good Bar Customer

17 Jul

And the customer education mission continues!  Be sure to check out my other tips if you haven’t already.  Mostly they’re funny.  Tip#1, Tip #2, Tip #3, Tip #4, Tip #5, Tip #6 and Tip #7.  Enjoy.  Share.

So I work in a bar that has 15 taps, which these days isn’t really anything to write home about, and a lot of brown liquor.  A lot.  There are so many choices. So many fun and interesting things to try.  So many possibilities.  So I get it, it can be sort of hard to figure out what you might want to drink.  So please, take your time and consider your options but keep this in mind:  choosing what drink to purchase is not like buying a car, it is not like picking a college, it is not like deciding on a career.  Those things will impact your life well beyond the making of the decision whereas choosing a drink really only makes a difference during the drinking of the drink itself.  It might be unpleasant to drink a beer you don’t like but you know what?  I get it.  Sometimes things are yucky.  Be cool.  I will hear your complaint, pour the offending drink out, serve you a new one and you know what?  If you’re nice during the whole interaction and don’t act as if I purposely mixed some foul tasting substance in with your beer specifically to fuck with you I won’t even charge you for it.  Isn’t that great? You know what will not get you a new drink?  Acting like an asshole like this girl did this past Saturday.  Let me explain.

So this past Saturday around 4:30 PM, give or take, a couple walked in and sat at a hightop.  They made no move towards the bar so after a few minutes I politely informed them that there was no table service and that they would have to come place their order at the bar.  Upon hearing this they did what people often do when I give them this information: they gave me nasty looks and acted as if they already knew there was no table service which I knew to be a complete lie because from the second they walked in the door and took their seats they were looking at me expectantly.  Whatever.  Some people just can’t be wrong.  No matter.  About a minute later the female half of the couple came up to the bar and ordered the champagne cocktail I had specialed for the day (I’ve been trying to use up that damn cassis for like, 4 years) and a rum and coke.  I made the drinks, she paid me and took them back to their table and we all carried on happily with our day.  Or so I thought.

About 1/2 hour later the girl comes back up to the bar with a completely untouched rum and coke and says to me, in one of the snottier tones I remember hearing recently (and this after I complimented her on her sandals!),

“Um…what did you make this with?”
Me: “The rum and coke?  Well…with rum? And coke?”
Snotface: “No, what kind of rum?  He says he can’t drink it.”
Me, upon lifting up the bottle of Rico Bay rum: “The well rum.  In any bar you go to if you order a ‘rum and coke’ that is what you will get.”
Snotface, in her best ever imitation of a small, bratty child: “Not any bar.”

I took a moment to calm myself and think about what bars she might frequent that don’t use well rums in their rum and coke. I thought maybe he had a very discerning palate and perhaps he just didn’t like our delicious Rico Bay.  Then I thought that was unlikely because he ordered a rum and coke.  Then I thought maybe they usually go to fancy bars that use call liquor like Bacardi for their well. I mean, her sandals were really nice so it was possible.  I decided it didn’t matter.  So I asked her, trying to do my best imitation of someone who thinks the person she is talking to is a complete bitch,

“Well, what kind of rum would you like, then?”

She turns to her companion to see what he would like and you know what he said? Cuervo.  I looked around the bar to see if anyone else was hearing this because it was hilarious.  She then turned back to me and, in a completely serious tone, repeated,

“He wants Cuervo.”
Me: “Um…tequila?  He wants tequila and coke?”
Snotface: “No, he wants rum and coke.”
Me: “That’s great except that Jose Cuervo is a tequila so I don’t really know what you want me to do here.”

Her companion then started hysterically laughing.  I guess he wasn’t such a bad guy.  Wish he would have ordered the drinks in the first place.  She looked terribly upset that she was not in on the joke.  He then, through fits of giggles, said to me,

“I want Captain Morgan!”

So you guys.  Spiced rum and regular rum taste really different.  This is mostly because spiced rum has spices in it.  Spices like vanilla maybe and some cinnamon.  A spiced rum and coke probably is going to taste different than a rum and coke.  Also, I don’t know of a bar worth its weight in salt that uses spiced rum as their well because you know what would happen? Someone would order a rum and coke and end up with a spiced rum and coke and it would taste weird and they would send it back because that is not, in fact, what they ordered.  Anyway, since she was such a fucking snot I made her pay for her new drink.  So anyway, the moral is if you screw up your order, don’t blame it on the person who made it for you.  Blame it on yourself.  Because it was, in fact, your fault.

Oh and then sort of on the same topic.  Here are three other drink ordering related things that drive most bartenders up the wall. You know, jut for your own edification.

(1) The people who come in when the bar is packed, wave you down (HUGE no-no), and then when you arrive to take their order they turn around to ask their friends what they want.  If you are going to commit the faux pa of waving, snapping, or hollering at your bartender then at least have your order down.  Otherwise you will drop down to the end of the drink line.

(2)  The people who walk in and then stare at the beer board, or taps, or drink menu for fucking ever and when you walk over to see if they are ready they’re all, “um? I need a minute?” as if part of your job is reading minds.  So you make an effort to pass them by every minute or so, looking at them as you slow down to see if they are ready and they either ignore you while staring blankly at the beer boards, taps or drink menu or they give you nasty looks.  Then, all of a sudden, they are ready!  They know what they want!  And they are incredibly agitated if you are not standing right in front of them at that very second for their order.  They act as though the amount of time it took them to get a beer is your fault as opposed to the absolute inability they have in figuring out what they want to drink as if it is the hardest and most important decision they have made ever in their entire lives.

(3)  The people who walk into a non-cocktail bar and when you ask them what they want they say “you tell me.”*  No, I’m sorry, that is not how it works.  You actually tell me. I do not want a description that’s like “I want something pink with some berry notes and a finish of bandaid.”  I want you to tell me the beer you want or the vodka you want or ask me my advice on what sort of whiskey or bourbon might be fun to try.  I will then pour that into the appropriate glass and give it to you.  And then you will like it and give me money.  And then maybe we’ll make some jokes and I’ll listen to you talk about your job and everything will be right with the world.

So yea, ordering.  It is one of the easiest things to do and yet people, regularly, get it oh so wrong.

*And, actually, in my experience cocktail bartenders don’t really like this either.  Generally they like you to at least give them a liquor and a general idea of sweet or savoryness.

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Tip #7 on Being a Good Bar Customer

18 Jun

And here it is, Tip #7.  You know what that means:  if there is a #7, then there must also exist #s 1-6 and guess what?  You’re in luck!  And you can read them all by following these links!  It’s like magic (or hyperlinks…).  Tip #1, tip #2, tip #3, tip #4, tip #5 and, finally, tip#6.

So in this blog I am going to tackle a topic that seems to be slightly divisive: kids in bars.  This divisiveness can be easily proven by referring to a comment I made on my Facebook page a few weeks back that simply read “No, I do not have milk for your child.”  The responses were diverse, to say the least, ranging from “bar life is slowly being destroyed in NYC by entitled parents” to “You’re right, people with kids should just stop trying to enjoy themselves.”  I am not here trying to start an all out war, but I have some opinions.  So, here goes.

I am not going to put myself strictly on one side of the argument or the other, but I think those who know me, and those who have gotten to know me through my writing here, can probably guess which way I tend to lean.  That being said, there are people who come in with their kids who I actually like having in there.  One couple specifically comes to mind.  They have been my once-a-month customers for years now and recently, about 2 months or so ago, they adopted two little girls who I lovingly call “the ladies.”  The ladies are very cute.  They are also very well behaved, always snoring away in their little baby bjorns, one on the front of one daddy, one on the front of the other.  The second one of them starts fussing, one of the parents takes her outside and bounces her around until she quiets down and goes back to sleep.  If that doesn’t work, they close the tab and head home.

I have noticed over the years that people who were customers of the bar before they reproduced or adopted were the best customers if they chose to bring their children in, although many of them do not.  Many of them will pop in with the baby every now and again to say hi and then be on their way.  But if they do decide to stay, they are incredibly attuned to their child, or children.  They respect the bar, they respect the other customers, and they respect me and understand that a crying baby will drive customers away, thereby lowering my income and making me angry.  And they don’t want to make me angry.  I am told I can be scary.

It’s the people that weren’t customers before that are the problem.  So a few weeks ago there I was at work when this guy came in.  He ordered a beer, drank about half of it, and then said he would be back in a few minutes.  Like a good bartender, I placed a napkin over his beer so no dust or little flying friends would go in it (also so I wouldn’t forget he was coming back and dump it out) and went about my business.  About ten minutes later he walked in…with his 6-year-old daughter.  Apparently she was at a birthday party across the street at the Little Gym.  He took his seat back up at the bar and she sat down next to him.  Just as an aside, I hate it when people let their little kids sit at the bar (to the person who follows my blog who brings his kids in, you are an exception because your kids are awesome and also they write stories about me and also neither of them is 6).  I actually think it is illegal and normally I would have said something about it but I wasn’t feeling up to the conversation and also he had been there before and I felt weird about it.  So, whatever, I just ignored it.  The dad was super distracted watching a monster truck rally on TV and was not paying any attention to his daughter at all.  When they got up to leave about 10 minutes later I noticed that she had scribbled all over the bar!  There was marker everywhere!  Why did he give her a marker?  Also, being in a bar is not an excuse to stop watching your kid.  I am a bartender, not a babysitter, I will not pick up the slack unless you pay me at least $30 an hour and even then I would probably tell you to go fuck yourself, I serve booze.

And here’s another example.  Just this past weekend these 3 adults came in with 2 toddlers.  That means there were 6 eyeballs to watch 2 little dudes running around.  They went out to the back, which immediately prompted all my backyard customers to move back into the bar.  About 1/2 hour later, I hear the mother screaming “Marky! Marky! No! Put that down!!”  And she runs over to where her son was standing with a rat trap in his hands.  He had dumped poison all over himself.  She didn’t realize what it was at first and said something along the lines of “ew, I don’t know what that was.”  I happened to be standing by the back door and, putting it all together, leaned my head out and said, “yea, that was a rat trap.  You might want to take him into the bathroom and wash his hands, arms, legs, and shoes with soapy water before he puts something in his mouth.”  The parents were actually cool about it, blaming their lack of attention for the oversight rather than the fact that we had a poisonous rodent trap on the ground.

Here’s the thing.  It actually doesn’t even matter what I personally think about you having kids in the bar because the reality of the situation is that bars, and my bar more specifically, tend to not be child friendly.  This does not mean I will cast you dark glances and spit in your drinks if you come in toting a toddler, it means that there are accessible outlets, furniture with sharp edges, there might be broken glass on the floor, and, as Marky found out the hard way, occasionally there is poison.  So I might talk a good game about how they cry and it gives me a headache or people change the diapers in the bathroom and then the whole bar smells like poo (this has totally happened before!) but really, I worry enough about my adult customers maiming themselves without adding two-foot-tall curiosity machines into the mix.

So, in summation, in the words of my brother (about something completely unrelated but whatever), “just because you can does not mean you should.”  And in the words of me, if you do anyway then watch your damn kid.  Going out to a bar to blow off some steam is only a vacation from parenting when you leave your kids at home.  Don’t make me parent for you because, guess what? I won’t.

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Sometimes Firemen Drink a lot and then Everything is Terrible

3 Jun

Sometimes things happen at work that sort of resemble a car crash in slow motion.  It’s like, you’re standing there, watching, and you know what is going to happen but you are absolutely powerless to stop it.  That is what my night was this past Thursday when a group of like 25 firemen (I say men because they were, in fact, all dudes and big ones at that) showed up for the retirement party of one of their firehouse compatriots who really didn’t look old enough to retire but what do I know from fire department rules.

So, everything started out more or less normal.  BIG pile of cash that firedude after firedude threw a 20 on.  It always seems super awesome when this happens until you realize that a lot of the time they keep drinking beer and stop throwing money on the pile and then you end up, three hours later, with a bar that smells like sweaty guys and a pile of like $15 singles.  But they were nice enough and I held out hope that this time I would actually make some money (I did, for reasons that will soon become clear).  Most of the guys were drinking bottled beers: Buds, Bud Lights, Amstels.  But there is always that one dude who wants to do all the shots in the world.  All of them.  And he wants all his friends to do them with him even if they don’t want to and if they don’t want to, then he does them all himself.

So, fast forward like almost an entire bottle of Fire Ball and 2 rounds of Sapphire martinis, the second one which was chugged, later.  It was one of those weird situations where you’re like, okay, well, these guys have had lots and lots of drinks.  But they seem to be laughing and chatting and joking around.  No one is falling over (well, except for this one guy but he was mostly concentrating on standing and not worried about what the other guys were talking about).  So you think, wow, maybe these firedudes are going to hold it together!  Maybe I won’t have to make the awkward move of cutting off like 25 beefy dudes who have not officially tipped me and also might become angry about being cut off.  And then, the car crash.  The super, duper, painfully slow car crash.

All of a sudden Fire Ball shot guy and his buddy who was humoring him and doing all the shots and drinking all the martinis got into it about seniority.  Fire Ball shot guy is like, pushing the other guy who, as it turns out, was his superior at the fire house and also had driven his car to the bar which I knew because he had left his side mirror on one of the bar tables which was a source of amusement for me for the entire night. Seriously, who takes the side view mirror off their car and then just like, deposits it randomly on a table and expects NOT to forget it?  I had to yell after his buddy to get it when they were all on their way out the door in a big, drunken, angry, fighting mob.  Anyway, so this argument devolves quite quickly into one guy pushing and the other guy yelling “don’t touch me!  Don’t touch me!”  At this point, my coworker and two customers go over to try and break up the fight and there I am, all 64 inches of me (on a good day) staring at this mass of big dudes and my little coworker, afraid she is going to get punched in the face and what do I do?  I grab a big glass of water and pour it on them.  And then when that has no affect, I refill it and do it again.  None of the fighting guys noticed but I did manage to get my coworker and one of my customer-friends pretty wet, sorry guys.

So eventually the whole lot of them left and, surprisingly, left their pile of cash on the bar which was actually quite sizable because Fire Ball guy had cut their revelry short.  So I was happy.  Until I noticed this idiot law student who had previously been in the bar drinking white wine for like, ever, chasing the whole big group of angry, drunk, wet firefighters down the street yelling at them about how they shouldn’t fight in the bar.  So, in order to shut her up, one of them picked her up and then put her back down again.  And then she devolved into a crying mess who kept calling me a bitch and then, about an hour later and on the other side of the avenue, repeatedly threw herself down on the sidewalk in a full-on tantrum fit for a 2 year old.  Her boyfriend, who probably weighs all of 90 pounds, was trying to calm her down when these two passers-by stopped and, thinking he was hitting her, threatened to beat him up.  Then my co-worker, still wet, had to go over and defuse that.  Then the cops came, then the passers-by left, then my coworker came back inside and then, two hours later, the boyfriend popped his head in to see if we knew where his girlfriend was.  Apparently he lost her.  Go figure.

As I said, a slow motion car crash that I was powerless to stop.  But I did learn one thing: I enjoy throwing water on people.  I would like to try that again…when my friends are out of harm’s way.

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Tip #6 on Being a Good Bar Customer

15 May

This is a series!  You can read all the other tips here: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5. Or you can read about this incredibly awkward sort of love triangle-esque (only so much worse!) situation that happened this one night.  Or you can read none of those and just read this one.  Here at FranklyRebekah we like to give you all the choice.

Don’t be a dick about sports.  I don’t mean like, voicing your opinion about your favorite team, although really I could give a shit.  I mean don’t be a dick about getting your specific game on the TV, especially when the bar you are walking into is a bar that sometimes plays sports and not a sports bar.  I have examples!

About 3 weeks ago I was at work, having a relatively run-of-the-mill day when in walks this dude.  He marches into the bar, looks around at the 4 televisions and exclaims, loudly and rudely,

“What? No Nets?!  We are in Brooklyn, right?”

People do this literally all the time.  “What? No Yankees?!”  “What? No Giants?!” “What? No Rangers?!” What if I walked into a bar and was all, “What?! No women’s gymnastics championships?!”*

Anyway, all the time.  All the fucking time.  It’s like, do you see a Nets game?  No?  Well, then, clearly the Nets are not currently being played in this bar.  I didn’t say that, though. Nope, I was nice.  But see, here’s the thing about being nice to people who ask to see games in that manner: they are almost always assholes of the “give them an inch they’ll take a mile” variety.  Whatever.  I walked over to him and this happened:

Me: “Can I help you?”

Dude: “Yea, you don’t have the Nets on.”

Me: “That’s true. Is that you telling me that you would like to watch the Nets?”

Dude: “Yes. I mean, we are in Brooklyn.  I mean, how could you not have the Nets on?”

Me: “Well, I mean, the Nets were a New Jersey team that everyone ignored until Jay-Z got on board but whatever.  What channel?”

Dude: “I don’t know.”

HUGE Nets fan right there.  Really needed to watch the Nets game and had absolutely zero idea as to what channel they were playing on.  In my experience people who are adamant about specific games have at least some semblance of an idea as to the channel.  But not this guy.  He starts throwing out random channels.  And there I am, like an idiot, pointing the stupid remote control at the cable box, scrolling up and down as this dude is like

“TNT! MSG! ABC! ESPN!”

Up and down and up and down and up and down.  In the midst of the scrolling, as I am getting extremely irritated, I scrolled over a hockey game to which another customer, sitting right next to the first customer, exclaims,

“The Rangers! I want to watch that!”

At which point I got extremely frustrated, slammed the remote control down on the bar and said,

“You know what? Why don’t you guys figure it out yourselves. I want nothing to do with this television.”

And then do you know what happened?  The HUUUUUUGE Nets fan could not figure out how to work the remote control.  He was standing there, staring at it, pointing it up at the television, staring at it again.  It was almost as if he thought by the pure power of his mind he would be able to make the channel change.  He then got frustrated and said, exasperatedly,

“How do you work this damn thing?”

To which I replied,

“You have to actually press a button.  Just point it at the television and hit ‘guide.'”

The hockey fan then took the remote control out of the Nets “fan’s” hands and, quickly, got the game on.  The Nets fan then ordered a drink.  He then sat there, staring blankly at the television as if he had never actually watched a basketball game ever in his entire annoying life, and then he took out a book.  He started reading a book.  And then he left.  Before the game was over.  I bet he just moved to Brooklyn like, yesterday.  Asshole.

So just as an FYI, my bar has exactly 4 flat screen televisions.  One of those televisions is like 10 years old and is hued kind of greenish.  I have to climb up on the back bar to turn it on because the remote is so old that it no longer works.  For those 4 televisions, we have 2 cable boxes.  That means we can have a total of 2 channels on 4 televisions.   I tell people this all the time and they don’t seem to compute (again, a bar that sometimes plays sports, not actually a sports bar).

Like the other day when this guy really wanted to watch the incredibly important Rangers game which was so important that he was the only person at the bar who wanted to watch it but all the TVs had the Knicks game on which didn’t matter at all because he doesn’t care about basketball.  I wanted to be like, dude, move to Canada.**  Anyway, he got all irate that we didn’t have the Rangers game on.  My boss even went so far as to take a poll down the bar to see if there was another soul in the bar who was interested in watching hockey, there wasn’t.***  So I, again, stupidly, trying to be nice, told him we only had two boxes so we could only have two channels on.  He responded by telling me to put it on one television.  I’m like, dude! What part of I cannot put it on one television do you not understand?  You have been hit by one too many hockey pucks.  I tried to send him to a nearby bar with all the TVs in the world (some call them sports bars), but he wouldn’t have any of it.  So I ignored him.  And he left.

Anyway, if you want to watch something, all you have to do is say “Excuse me? Would you mind putting on the Strong Man contest? I like to watch dudes lift things that are so heavy that their noses bleed.” And I would say, okay, but I would be sure to put it one of the TVs that I can’t see because Strong Man contests make me want to vomit.

*I would never do this for three reasons. One, people would probably laugh me out of the place. Two, I doubt the sound would be turned on and you simply cannot watch floor without the music. And three, I think there are some pervy dudes who like to watch 14-year-old girls tumble around in leotards and that makes me feel icky.

**Actually, don’t.  I have some friends from Canada and I really like them and I think probably I would like lots of other people from there too and I would not like to punish them with your presence.  I will research islands with no inhabitants.  You can move to one of those. With a TV. To watch hockey. There are flaws here…

***I told my boss my theory about the “give an inch take a mile” variety of assholes, of which this dude definitely was an example, so he left well enough alone.

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People Never Cease to Amaze Me…

11 Mar

…and I don’t always mean that in a good way.

It was my first weekend shift back at work after my (too short) vacation to New Orleans.  I was setting up the bar, feeling pretty good about my morning run and laughing about something that had happened at dinner with my family the night before when the phone rang.  It was Johan.*  I actually didn’t know who Johan was but by the way he started the conversation I guess I should have?  Anyway, apparently Johan had been in the bar the night before and had forgotten his card.  I found the card in the register — it had already been rung up for the amount plus a 20% tip as is our custom — and told him it would be safely sitting there waiting for him to come pick it up.  He told me his friend was probably going to come get it and gave me her name.  He laughed when I informed him his card had already been charged but it wasn’t like a, ‘wow that was funny’ sort of laugh it was more like a rude scoff which I didn’t particularly appreciate but whatever.  I mean, I wasn’t the one who forgot my card at the bar so I kind of figured if anyone in that phone conversation had the right to a rude scoff it was me.  I didn’t scoff, though.  I exercised restraint.  Anyway, I hung up the phone with Johan and went about finishing the task of setting up the bar so I could unlock the door promptly at 12 to the throngs of people waiting outside.**

About 1/2 hour later the phone rang again.  I noticed that the number on the Caller ID looked suspiciously like Johan’s number.  I answered and, sure enough, Johan!  He started explaining to me about the card again prompting me to inform him that I was, in fact, the same person he had spoken to a mere 30 minutes ago and that I remembered the situation quite clearly.  He then told me that his friend would be unable to pick up his card that day.  The rest of the conversation went as follows:

Me:  Oh, that’s okay.  I will just leave it sitting in the register until you can get here.  Don’t worry, I won’t go on a shopping spree or anything.***

Johan, decidedly not amused by my comment:  Well, I was wondering if you could send it to me by post.

So in this brief moment I thought to myself, okay, maybe Johan was just in town visiting some friends but by noon on a Saturday he was no longer in the city.  Or!  Maybe Johan, with his thick Scandinavian accent, was actually at JFK awaiting his flight back to whatever distant land he came from and he was calling in a panic, trying by whatever means possible to get his beloved card back.

Me: Um, where do you live?

Johan: Manhattan.

Me, shocked:  Um, so why don’t you just get on the train and come down here and pick it up?

Johan:  I’m very busy.  My parents are coming to town…I am going back to visit in Switzerland at some point.

Me:  Well, I also am very busy and we don’t have envelopes at the bar right now.  I work all day today and tomorrow.  So you would like me to take this card home with me and then on Monday go out and buy stamps and envelopes and then mail it to you?

Johan who obviously does not understand sarcasm:  Yea, that would be great.

Me:  Um.  Yea.  I’m not going to do that. You’re going to have to come pick it up.

Johan:  But I live all the way on 34th Street!

Me:  Somewhere near Penn Station?

Johan:  Yes! Exactly!

Me:  Oh, you mean you have express trains there?  Just take the 2/3.  It’ll take you like 1/2 hour to get here.  Otherwise I can cut the card up for you.

Johan:  So you won’t send it to me?!

Me: No.

Johan seemed both shocked and appalled by the tragic turn of this conversation.  He really thought that I would mail him his card.  To Manhattan.  Because he was far too busy to get on the train and come pick it up.  And, I mean, if he was on his way back to Europe, or if he lived super far out of town, I probably would have just mailed it to him because I am nice. But dude lived in Manhattan!  He just couldn’t be bothered to come get his damn card. Eventually he informed me that he was going to have a different friend come pick it up for him and all was well and good but seriously, if I ever hear a European tell me that American’s are lazy, I am going to give them Johan’s number.

*Name changed by Googling “common Swedish names.” In hindsight, I should have gone with Lars.

**In the interest of full disclosure there were no throngs.  Basically never are.  And if there were throngs, or even just one throng, I would probably be annoyed about it because a throng, in my experience, never results in something good.  It results in like, stampedes and stuff and it was far too early, and I am far too young, to be stomped to death.

***That is basically my favorite thing to say to people when they call about a forgotten card.  Or I tell them I have already gone on a shopping spree and thank them for my awesome new Vespa but they never seem quite as entertained as me.

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