Today I am writing my blog from my parent’s house. Happy Franksgiving week, everyone!
Generally speaking when I write blogs about people, I either don’t know their names or else I change them to save them from embarrassment. This is the kind of person that I am. Following the events of this past Thursday, however, I have decided that I am not vindictive enough and that this is a character trait that I must try and develop. If people act like assholes, after all, they should be called out and called out by (first) name! (Clearly I am in the very early stages of vindictive-development.) Also, this dude was such an incredible shithead that I think I would be doing the world a disservice by not calling him out. So, here goes. Let us all hope that he doesn’t sue me for libel* (he’s a lawyer, god help us all).
So, you guys, sometimes working behind the bar really blows. It sucks when you have gotten dumped only days previously and you have to keep running down to the basement to cry in secret. It sucks when you have a fever. And it REALLY sucks when some asshole smears his own shit all over the walls of the men’s room. Worse than all that, though (well, maybe not worse than the shit on the walls but I think that was a once in a lifetime experience), is when someone who has previously been 86’ed walks in and you can tell they are not going to leave without a fight.
As a first little piece of advice here, and I am pretty sure I have mentioned this somewhere before, if you have been asked to never return to a bar, you should probably just never return there. I mean, why in the world would you? Seriously, if I was ever kicked out of a bar I would make it my business to never even walk on the same block as the bar. No, I probably wouldn’t even walk within 3 blocks! I would be so ashamed that an entire neighborhood would be completely off-limits due to my own obnoxiousness. But some people just don’t have that same decency or self-respect. Some people think that they are entitled to go anywhere they damn please and if they scream loud enough then other people will understand their logic and acquiesce. Only in most places of reason and normalcy, that doesn’t actually work. Sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes the bar in which I work is a place of reason and normalcy. It was such a place last Thursday when this guy Mike walked in and assumed he would have his way. He assumed wrong.
So there me and my friend were, behind the bar, when we saw him walk in. After some talk, I decided I would break one of my rules by leaving the safety of the bar and talking to him face-to-face. My only other option was to yell to him from behind the bar because he was standing a ways away, thereby drawing everyone into the drama and making it significantly worse. So, I calmly walked over to him and then…
Me: Mike, you can’t be in here. And you can’t have that drink. If you want to come in tomorrow and speak with the owners, you are more than welcome to do that but as of now you are not allowed to be in here.
At this point, this lovely gentleman made a gun using his thumb and forefinger, held it up to my forehead and pretended to shoot me.
Me: Okay, well, that is on camera so now any chance you ever had of being let back in here is gone.
Then the yelling began. He asked me if I was the “enforcer.” Admittedly, this is a funny question because I am like 5’4″, 115 pounds and he is, from my perspective, kind of huge. At least 1.5 times my size. But this underscores for you non-industry readers what it is like being a bartender, and a female one at that. A lot of the times the people you get into it with could overpower you no questions asked. Hence why it is always smarter to stay behind the damn bar (stupid Rebekah, stupid!). Anyway, I (with a slight giggle) told him I was the enforcer. Then he started calling me a slave. Apparently not serving him meant that I no longer had any agency whatsoever. And then all of a sudden I was a bitch and a whore. Oh, and somewhere in there I was also useless. Can’t forget useless. At some point after being called a bitch, after his girlfriend slapped me in the arm and before Mike threw money at me, my co-worker and I did sort of an asshole hand-off. I walked behind the bar, she threatened to call the cops but actually just called our boss who lives upstairs, and then she went out to deal with him. He recycled all his favorite epithets on her, “slave” being his favorite. At some point he crumpled up a $20 bill and threw it at my face. I really hate when people do that. Like, REALLY. Honestly, if he had never thrown the money at me I probably wouldn’t ever have written this blog but that is just so incredibly disrespectful and demeaning that I can hardly stand it. I mean, who does that? You know what? I do work for money. But do you know who else works for money? You guessed it, lawyers! But you don’t see me going into a court room and throwing money at him. No, sir.
This went on for quite some time. At some point I remember standing behind the bar, him yelling all kinds of insulting things and me simply saying, “well, you’re welcome to your own opinion.” I truly believe that. He is welcome to it. Only, his opinion is wrong. But whatever. No point in splitting hairs over it. Eventually, after much yelling, he left. I was happy he left because it meant I didn’t have to deal with him anymore but I was sad he left without handcuffs on his wrists.
Later I found out this is like a normal thing for him. He just gets shitcanned and picks fights with people and then his booze-induced selective memory allows him to think that none of it was his fault. But at some point, you would think that he would realize that the amount of altercations he gets into is because of him and not because of every other person in the entire world. I was trying to explain this to someone and in doing so I said “well, one of these days he is going to pull this shit on the wrong person” to which this guy responded, interestingly, “I think maybe he’s the wrong person.” That got me thinking. Maybe he IS the wrong person. How sad would it be to wake up one day and realize that you are that theoretical ‘wrong person’ everyone is always warning people they might one day meet? That person has no friends and eventually dies alone in a tiny apartment somewhere and has his face chewed off by his dog because no one notices for days that he’s dead and the dog is hungry. Poor dog.
Anyway, all that happened before 10pm. I had to work until 4. I was not my normal, sunny self. Good thing I didn’t learn until a few days later about the other customer who decided to call me a cunt because I didn’t want to hear her gloating about keeping Mike out of jail. (For the record, I am sad he was not led out in handcuffs and will continue to feel that way.) Ah, the bar business. Good times.
(By the way, any neighborhood bartenders who want to know this guy’s full name because I know for a fact that he frequents a few of your establishments, — Kris, I’m looking at you! — I am more than happy to oblige. Part of achieving my goal of vindictiveness is coincidentally paralleled with my goal of warning others of inevitable volcanic eruptions at their places of employment.)
*As far as I understand it, one can only sue for libel if the the information being shared is an untruth that will do that person harm. This story is a truth and I don’t think anyone in a position of power reads this blog so I’m pretty sure any real harm is out of the equation. Safe?
franklyrebekah 