Episode 119: Weeeeeen!

This is a picture of Av and her friend Leah on Halloween. As you can see, Leah has an adorable dinosaur costume on. My daughter, however, is dressed like a hooker. I was opposed to this costume from day one and I feel that it is slightly inappropriate and embarrassing. That said, if you are not jaded and do not have a mind in the gutter like myself, she looks kind of cute. She needs cat ears and would have still been funnier in the dinosaur suit, but I'll take it.

I was not there for the trick or treat extravaganza, as I was still working my college job as a bartender that night, but the days leading up to the evening were pretty funny. Especially since Av started calling Halloween 'ween,' which in Monica and I's crazy, kind of juvenile world has always been slang for 'wiener.' Av has an uncanny ability to repeat just about any word, like 'yellow' 'hippo' or 'mac and cheese' but for some reason she can't get certain words down. Like pumpkin. She just kept saying 'Mama.' As you can imagine, this was very confusing. She is also yet to mimic any swears that she hears, which is remarkable, because Monica and I are pretty bad a censoring ourselves.

From what I hear, trick or treating went fairly well with no incidents. The baby learned how to say 'Baby Ruth' and chowed down on Crunch Bars and M&M's all night. Cool. Meanwhile, I was bar tending at a restaurant directly in the center of the busiest Halloween city in the country. The night was, in a word, miserable. Most of the month of October is pretty hectic, and most Saturday nights are as busy, if not busier than Halloween was this year, but it is just something about that day specifically that makes the job that much harder. Aside from having to deal with crazy business levels, i have to wait on people that seemingly only go out to a bar once a year as well as having to listen to freaked out managers asking me to make sure that no one gets drunk. It is a bar, guys, people are going to get drunk. My goal is to just make sure no one falls asleep or gets in to a fight. That said, there were a few humorous drunk guy incidents that took place Sunday night.

First, I always think it is funny when another bartender asks me if they should cut someone off and then serves them anyway. It epitomizes how we all think when it is busy. 'This guy is obviously drunk. He isn't causing any trouble, though, and I don't have the energy to fight with him after I cut him off, so let's just give him one.' I do it all of the time. Just make sure you call them a cab, Dan, and everything will be cool. Well, my friend, Pat, was waiting on this guy and came up to ask me the question. A rule of thumb as a bartender is that if you A. have to ask if someone is too drunk to serve or B. if you are wondering if you should ID someone, the answer is always 'yes.' Always. So Pat comes up and says 'I think I should cut this guy off, what do you think?' I looked over to see a man with one eye open, smashing tortilla chips in to his face. Before I could answer, Pat had poured the beer. Classic 'I don't want to deal with it' mentality. The funny part is that this particular gentleman never drank the beer, because he fell asleep on the bar. This is one of my favorite things. I love waking drunk people up. I have been known to throw coasters at them, hit the bar top with broom handles and pulling their chairs out from under them. Don't sleep at my bar. Grow up and go home. The only exception to this is an old, fat man named Peter, who I have nicknamed 'Sleepy Pete.' Pete is fat and miserable, but deep down he is a nice guy. Also, most of the time he falls asleep at the bar it is because he has been driving back and forth from Connecticut taking care of his dying mother and just wants a beer and some turkey tips before he goes home. A 4-hour drive, plus beer plus triptophan equals sleepy time at 11 p.m. That said, I don't let him sleep, I am just nicer about waking him up. Anyway, I chose to wake up Pat's friend by simply pounding the bartop and yelling 'no sleeping!' as I walked by. This not only woke him up, but apparently marked the last straw for his girlfriend, who got up and left, leaving Drunky McSLeeperson there to find his own way home. He stood next to the bar, wobbly calling his girl for at least 45 minutes before I finally got some mercy and handed him a business card for a cab company, forgetting, of course, that the roads downtown were closed. I'm not sure what happened to that guy, but he left the bar and we never saw him again.

Someone asked me the other day if I liked to kick people out. That is a tough question, if I am in a bad mood and someone is pissing me off, absolutely I like to kick them out. I take pleasure in it. I once made a guy follow me in to the bathroom and explain to me every single thing that he was complaining about, right down to the paper towel on the floor, before I took his beer out of his hand and told him never to come back. That was cool because I was pissed at him anyway, having a crappy night and was ready to give him the boot. Other times, though, kicking people out sucks. I just don't have the energy or the passion to fight.

One particular incident took place late Halloween night. A group of fairly young (21-22) kids were at the bar and they were drunk. They weren't making a lot of noise or causing any problems, they were just drunk, kind of rude and didn't need any more beer. Another bartender cut them off and one of them proceeded to ask all of us for a beer at one point or another, hoping to catch one of us who hadn't heard the news. A member of his group asked me for a shot of Jack Daniels, and I calmly explained that we don't have liquor because we are a micro brewery that brews beers on site and it is a different license, a conversation I have about 600 times a night. His friend's response was 'That is fucking gay.' To which i did not respond. Almost immediately after, the cut off kid asked me for a refill, nicely. I said, 'Sorry man, but you're done tonight.' He looked at me, surprised, as if this was the first he heard of it and he said 'Ok, they take your fucking glass back, asshole.' Now, most nights I would have just given him the shark eyes and not said anything, but tonight I was tired and ready to go so I said 'You know what, man? Now you and your crew can leave.' He ignored me and I went about my cleaning without addressing it again, figuring he got the point and would stop talking back. Unfortunately, another bartender heard this and got the manager who gave him the boot. The kid told me he would be waiting for me when I left and I told him that he may want to think twice about how he talks to people who control whether or not he stays in a bar. Inside, though, I felt kind of bad. I even pulled the manager aside and admitted that I had a little bit of a quick hook with him, but it was to no avail. He was removed, yelling and threatening me, really just because he was a little drunk and was mad that we wouldn't get him more drunk. That is when I don't like kicking people out.

So, there is some insight in to what it is like to bar tend on Halloween. Hectic, tiring, confrontational. Sometimes I wish that I was a kid again so that I could look forward to it. As for my kid, she had a decent time in her hooker costume, but she brought home a disappointing amount of candy. Good thing Walgreens has Halloween candy on sale.