Tag Archives: stupidity

Tip #19 on Being a Good Bar Customer

22 Jul

Just before I get into this I need to say the following thing: I cannot believe I am actually writing the tip that I am writing. It really just blows my mind. Okay, are you ready? Here we go.

Tip: Do not walk into a bar, order a beer for you and your friend and then turn around without leaving money, walk out of the bar with the two open beers and then get into your car – one of you behind the wheel –  and drive away. Don’t do that. And especially don’t do that and then walk back into the bar approximately 45 minutes later and expect to not take the biggest fucking verbal lashing of your entire adult life. Story time? Well, I guess I pretty much just told the story but I am going to elaborate.

So there I was, at work as usual. I was expecting a slow day but it got pretty busy which was good because hooray for money! At the same time it was bad because I was in the middle of The Reckoning (Rebekah speak for the worst period I’ve had in a long time) and I was leaking iron faster than my body could produce it. I just wanted to do my job and not have to deal with any sort of shenanigans. But there are always, always shenanigans. So, anyway, in walks this dude with his buddy and he walks up to the bar and orders a beer for himself and one for his friend. I popped them both and handed them across the bar and then, right before my very eyes, the two of them walked through the bar, out the door, through the outside patio area and into their car and then they drove off down a busy avenue in the middle of the afternoon. I was dumbfounded. But then I stopped being dumbfounded and got really mad. I swear there was so much anger-pressure built up in my head right in that moment that if my head were to explode the sheer power of the explosion would have catapulted brain matter all over the ceiling which, by the way, is extremely high.

I spent the next 45 minutes oscillating between doing my job and being angry. I was working very hard on not doing both those things at once. It went something like this:

  • Stand behind the bar thinking about what a fucked up thing just happened
  • Notice that someone needs a beer
  • Take a deep breath, smile, walk towards the person to inquire as to what they might need
  • Say “Hi, how are you? What can I get for ya?” Listen intently for response.
  • Get the thing, deliver it and take payment
  • Immediately begin thinking about the fucked up thing and get mad again
  • Repeat

But then the 45 minutes of intense mood regulation came to an end because the mother fucker walked back into the bar again and was all

Hey, what’s up?

I scowled, shook my head and waved my hand in his general direction in a way that I was hoping communicated something along the lines of

Get the fuck out of here before I rip you a new one.

It didn’t work because he ordered a beer.

And then the floodgates opened. The floodgates of rage. I was sweating. I was shaking. I think I got goosebumps. I unloaded perhaps the biggest barrage of righteous anger that has come out of my in years. It actually included the phrase “who the fuck do you think you are” which is something you aren’t supposed to say until you have children and those children decide to go joyriding around the neighborhood with open bottles of beer.

O_o

Anyway, through the whole verbal onslaught this man (rightfully) endured, he just stood there and stared at me in utter disbelief. Much like how I stared at his car as it traveled down 5th avenue a mere three quarters of an hour earlier. And then he made a fake phone call and got back into his car, where he sat for the following 1/2 hour thinking about what he had done. (No, probably not but a girl can dream.)

So yea, don’t do that. Don’t buy beers and then leave a bar with the beers. This is not New Orleans. And even there you need to have Go Cups. You can’t just go parading around the neighborhood with open glass bottles of shit. But especially don’t buy beers, leave the bar with the beers, and then go get behind the wheel of your car. So many things could happen.

  1. You could get arrested
  2. The bar could lose its liquor license
  3. I could get a massive fine and, likely, lose my job
  4. You could kill yourself or someone else
  5. None of those things happen but instead you have to deal with my rage and it might not be as bad as the rest of the things, but you won’t forget it. I am really good with words when I am angry. And nothing makes me more angry than the complete and utter disregard that some people have for the safety and livelihoods of those they share this world with.

And while we’re on this topic, please don’t order a Long Island Ice Tea from me ever, but especially when you are holding your fucking car keys. Do you think I cannot see them? Do you think I am stupid? Do you think I lack the powers of deductive reasoning? Because I can, I’m not and I don’t. Not by a long shot.

Enjoy your weekend, friends. And be safe out there. Some dick head might be driving around while boozing it up at 5pm. You never know.

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Ugh

15 Jun

As you can probably gather from the title, this is bound to be an especially well-written post.  So I apologize in advance if this is just a whole big page full of word vomit.

Have you ever had one of those days where you’re jut like, “ugh, everything is just stupid.”  Well I have.  And I did recently.  It was yesterday. I don’t know where exactly it came from but I was on a walk to visit a friend over in Ditmas Park where she was pulling pints at some event or another for some local New York City food truck vendor.  At least I think it was a food truck vendor.  They all have food trucks these days, right?  And actually, the event maybe wasn’t really for the vendor, the vendor was just included in it.  I don’t know, I didn’t really care about the vendor or the beer, to be honest, I just wanted an excuse to go for a long walk and see my friend.  So there I was, walking, listening to the same damn music I have been listening to on all my walks recently and it just hit me like a ton of bricks…

…everything right now is just sort of stupid.

And then I had this really strong urge to just punch a wall or something.  But not like, a hard wall, more like some sheet rock or something.  Or, better yet, maybe some sheet rock that has already been munched on by some termites, assuming termites even eat sheet rock, so it’s not really all that hard.  What I really wanted to do was punch a not-so-hard wall so I had the pleasure of feeling really tough when my hand came crashing through the other side but without the downside of (a) bloodying my knuckles, (b) punching the wall and not actually having my hand come through the other side or (c) some combination of a and b.  I actually thought about all that for a good five minutes.  And that, friends, is part of the reason why everything is stupid because rather than busying my mind with fun adventures, or like problem-solving or, I don’t know, coming up with some semblance of a plan for my life which is sort of a mess, I thought about the ideal way to punch a wall, or something resembling a wall, so that my hand would come through the other side and I would feel like a super hero.  I actually thought to myself…

…well, everything else might be stupid but the one thing that would not be stupid would be me punching my hand through a wall and not getting hurt.

And then I promptly thought…

…get it together, Frank.

Like, seriously.

So here are some of the things that are stupid:

(1) My cat, Clark, has now remembered how fun it is to knock things off the shelves and so last night, at around 2am, he took it upon himself to knock every single can of his food off the shelf, one by one.  Crash.  Crash.  Crash.

(2) The hand soap in the bathroom ran out so I decided to replace it with Dr. Bronner’s and now it sort of looks like someone peed in the soap dispenser which is both funny but also sort of unnerving.

(3) I need a vacuum.

(4) I had a conversation with my friend on the phone and we came to the conclusion that the economy sucks, that our field is a mess and I had a mini-panic attack that I am going to spend the rest of my life assembling storage racks in windowless rooms and avoiding getting stabbed with rusty nails while I break down crates for like $15 an hour.  It’s a long story.  The central message being that higher education is not all it’s cracked up to be.

(5) I wore my new sandals and ripped the top 4 layers of skin off my cute and tiny pinky toe.

There are lots of other stupid things that actually matter (well, number 4 matters and, actually a little bit number 2 also because urine in a soap dispenser…ew) but I don’t really want to write about them here because they are A Bigger Deal.  But suffice it to say that all the things that are stupid have brought me to the conclusion that I have been going about this whole life thing entirely incorrectly.  The whole thing, wrong approach this entire time and no one told me.  No one was like

Hey, Rebekah, I know you think you have it together but the thing is that you’re wrong and I just thought maybe you should know so you don’t continue on embarrassing yourself kind of like that one time when you went for a run and the string of your tampon was hanging out the bottom of your shorts.  Remember that?  Good times.

And then the other thing is this.  So I have been trying to amend my approach to things and sort of take the high road and as it turns out taking the high road sort of just sucks sometimes.  There’s no real satisfaction involved in the high road.  You have to be all, “well, this isn’t really worth me losing my cool over so I will just shrug my shoulders and sit over here and watch while you implode every so slowly.”  But the thing is that sometimes the implosion never happens, and the person goes through life sort of just being a dick and thinking they are right all the time and you have to know that they also think they are right vis-a-vis you and that one time (or maybe multiple times) they said something really sort of offensive and you knew if you called them out on it they would shrug their shoulders and then be all

whatever, bitches be crazy.

And I hate that.  It’s so…for lack of a better word, stupid.  And you know what else?  I really think I should be able to call dudes out on their misogyny without them then giving me the side eye and thinking I am a complete nut job.  Or like, I should be able to tell random dudes at bars that “accidentally” touching my leg 6 times is not okay when there is absolutely zero need for you to be standing that close to me in the first place without the fear that it will turn into A Thing and I will feel uncomfortable and like I did something wrong and that probably I should just leave.

And I just washed my hands with the pee soap again.  I really need to do something about that.

Okay, I am going to go for a run now in hopes that it will adjust the whole thing that is happening in my head.  Maybe I will come back from the run and realize that in actuality only like 50% of the things are stupid and that’s something I can maybe work with.  And then tomorrow maybe I will be back to writing about how the men’s rights movement is the most ridiculous movement I have ever heard of.  But not today.  Today is Father’s Day and so I will lay off doing the things that make my father worried about my safety.

Happy Father’s day to all the dad’s but especially to my dad, the second greatest dad in the world after King Tritan from The Little Mermaid.  That’s an old joke.  Don’t ask.

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A Piece of Advice: Don’t Mace Yourself in the Face.

28 Feb

So tomorrow I am leaving for a week long trip to Peru with my friend Carrie.  I decided that now, the day before I leave, would probably be the right time to start packing for my trip.  So, I burrowed into the closet and found my backpacking bag and pulled it out only to discover that I never actually fully unpacked the bag from my trip to India…a trip I took in the summer of 2011. In case you were wondering, that trip occurred approximately 2.5 years ago.  So, you know, clearly I am a responsible and reasonable adult.  Anyway do you know what I found in there??  Aside from my Chaco sandals and a pair of super old running shoes I discovered mace in a pink leather holster sort of thing gifted to me by my awesome and hilarious friend Kendra.  So now let us take a little trip down memory lane, shall we?

Kendra gifted me my stylish mace one night when we were out having a drink.  Or maybe she gave it to me and then I went and had a drink.  I guess it really isn’t important.  The important part of the story is that I walked to my house 10 blocks from the F and G stop with my mace, slightly inebriated, all the while wondering what I would do if someone were to approach me in an intimidating manner.  I decided that when I got home the first order of business was to make sure my mace worked and figure out how to spray a possible assailant quickly and efficiently.

Fast forward about 10 minutes.

I could hardly contain my excitement!  I got home, took the mace out of its cute little pink house, and looked at the instruction booklet.  It said not to spray the mace into the wind because it would be blown right back into your own face.  Not ideal.  It was a little windy and I didn’t trust myself, in that state, to figure out the direction the wind was coming from.  So, sadly, I put my mace back in its house and moped my way up the stairs.  But I had to know if it worked!  I just had to!  So you know what I did?  I went into the bathroom and sprayed the mace into the sink.

So you know something about sinks?  They are bowled which means that if you spray an aerosol thing into them the spray just sort of bounces off the sink and, you guessed it, goes directly into your face.  Do you know what hurts?  Getting maced in the face.  Do you know what makes you an idiot?  Macing yourself in the face in the bathroom.

So, just let that sink in (no pun intended) and remember:  I did this so you don’t have to.

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