What You don't do...

...when you walk into a bar, and I can't stress this enough and that's why I'll underline it with profanity, what you do NOT do when you walk into a fuckikng bar is piss off the bartender. Some would say, 'no shit, that's common sense,' but since when has common fucking sense had ANYTHING to do with the real world?

There was one customer, we used to call this guy Quarters. Wanna guess why? This guy would come in every weekend for the band, sometimes on Wednsdays as well (the mid-week band night) with his pig-ugly woman, what I can only assume via the similarities in facial abnormalities was her sister, and then the sister's boyfriend*. These were the most obnoxious people EVER (I'm probably going to say that every time I describe an obnoxious customer, get used to it. Maybe I should hold a contest when this is all written and done and you readers can email in and vote for who you think is the most obnoxious, then I could tally the results, fly back to Chicago and staple a certificate to that person's forehead. What'dya think?). I mean, they would sit at the bar and make out, tell you to 'shoo fly' if you happened to be anywhere near them while this occurred, exchange and inspect 'adult novelty books and items' at the bar, like they had to try and flaunt the fact that their decrepit asses were getting laid - UGHHH! It makes me sick just thinking about it. Quarters was known to have a generally disrespectful presentation to anyone in the service industry. He'd bark out commands instead of requests. He'd finish his drink and pound on the bar to get your attention. He'd holler "YO! Bartender!~ Can I get a Fucking drink down here or WHAT?" across the bar.** They'd order appetizer platters, mixed drinks, martinis, pina coladas, ALL AT IN THE SAME SITTING. Or the sister's boyfriend, he'd just drink tap white zinfindel most nights (yes, I said it, it's not a lie, we had bad white zin on a tap at this bar. You know where the flow originated? a BOX of wine, several hundred feet away in our walk-in cooler. It was hard enough to keep the beer lines running fresh over all that distance, what do you think already shitty wine must have tasted like? Here's a hint - a once watched it drive a grown man to tears).

Quarters would always order shots of Chartreuse, so he could light them on fire and impress his lady friend. I guess he thought this made him look like a bad ass. I don't know about you, maybe my palette just isn't 'cultured' for Chartreuse, but to me it tastes like it looks (the green one at least). Like someone took rotten mouthwash, mixed it with old, untreated pool water, and then filtered that merry combination ever so carefully through their German Shepard's asshole, letting the results collect in a pothole and then submerging the bottle to fill it. Cap that bitch and BOOM! Instant hatred in a bottle.

As they drank, ate, danced (?) and tongue-fucked they would get louder and louder. They'd par off and go out on the dance floor like middle-aged, over weight white people who came of age in the seventies and reached the pinnacle of personal exploration thinking Linda Ronstandt went well with Fondue and Cocaine would and make complete fools of themselves. I mean, here are the people that paid seventy dollars to see Miami Sound Machine at the height of their 'Conga' phase. These are the people that ruined American culture and drove millions of kids in the late seventies to Punk and millions more in the eighties to Satan-metal posturing. I'd imagine their children slipped away on school nights and sacrficed squirrels in the local graveyard, desecrating Baphomet's name just because one of the assholes in a band like Saxon mentioned it in a song.***

All this, and at the end of the night, when the Chartreuse was gone, the lipstick smeared and the hot wing bones left piled high on the bartop and in the ashtrays, do you know what Quarter's left as a tip?

Guess.

TWO FUCKING QUARTERS.

Habitually. Every time. For real. I mean it.

One time one of the other bartenders actually ran after him and said, 'Um, excuse me sir, you left your change on the bar'.

Now, many of you no doubt have had service gigs. This sounds like a nightmare, right? Well, I'd also be willing to bet that there are people out there, maybe people reading this, maybe people the people reading this know or even wait on that do not realize that this is inappropriate behavior. Inappropriate to the people handling the things that you are soon to be consuming, and frankly just downright inappropriate IN PUBLIC, IN GENERAL.

So there you have what not to do. Now I give you 'why'.

Quarters and his friends professed a love for Grey Goose vodka. They ordered it all the time. LOVED the taste of it with cranberry. Guess what? Quarters might have paid the over-inflated price for Grey Goose, but he NEVER drank it. Nope. I believe the brand we used in the well was Barton's. So in a blind taste test, you might say four out of four assholes choose Barton over Grey Goose.

Maybe I should be going to the Barton marketing with this? Oh yeah, the company's probably run out of someone's sister's house, so probably no advertising there.

Gin? Tanqueray? Nope. Barton.

Tequila (and here's where you'd think he'd know the difference, as good tequila, such as the Cazadores he'd order is a world away, no a goddamn UNIVERSE away from the Montezuma he'd get.

Furthermore, guess who never got a clean glass?

I could go on, but use your imagination.

These are the reasons you DO NOT walk into a bar the first time, let alone EVERY SUBSEQUENT TIME, and treat the wait staff there like shit. You WILL pay. They may not be able to laugh in your face, but they will laugh amongst themselves the following week when they here you talking about the terrible diarrhea you had after the last time you went out, and you just cannot figure out why.

....................

*can you still call a fifty-something year old coouple 'girlfriend and boyfriend? I know people who do but their mostly tacky, irritating people who would trade their souls to be able to re-do the younger years they squandered.

**That actually only happened once on Eye and mine's shift, as she had to put up with alot of his shit, but profanity can still get you kicked out of decent establishments you know. Believe me, I know.

***yes, I just dropped a Saxon reference. Deal with it.