Tuesday, November 18, 2008
When I was working in the bar business that was all I wanted to do. But in wanting that I made myself an asshole. I wanted people to come in and have a good time and to drink and get drunk and dance and play and be groovy.
Unfortunately I also demanded that these same people be courteous, reasonable, and respectful to each other, and my bar. (I know it wasn’t ‘my’ bar but I was in charge and I did a good job) Unfortunately, as I grew older and wiser, the people that I was serving were not ready to be respectful social drinkers. My crowd was the fraternities and sororities of Chico State.
Some of you, of a certain age, may remember Chico State from the late 80’s where they celebrated Pioneer Days and MTV even went as far as to put a map up every hour for a week solid on how you could get to Chico California for this amazing party. Playboy rated it the number one party school in the nation. That year was the last year for Pioneer Days as it was also the first time that there were 4500 arrests (none of those people Chico State students, ALL out of towners) and huge riot where a cop car and a news wagon were set on fire along with a trash bin and all the furniture out of every apartment in a complex called “the Zoo”.
At the time I was not there. I was in college elsewhere causing my own riots. April 25th 1987 were the riots and I didn’t get there until September of 88. So none of that shit was my fault.
My clients acted much like that of rioters on a nightly basis. With the exception of fighting which only happened 4 times in the 6 years I was at the bar, and only one of them a full blown street melee, it was relatively blood free. I am speaking more of the inane stupidity that is the mob mentality. I had drunks that would inevitably get so intoxicated they would think that because I was sober I was also somehow less smart then they were. One night I was repeatedly telling one of my favorite regulars to stop trying to stand on the bar stool, and he kept ignoring me because he knew that if he could just stand on the bar stool he would be able to dance 63% better than any white man in the place.
I stopped him from getting all the way erect 4 maybe 5 times, the second I would get distracted by someone at the door, he was back on the stool wanting to stand up. Well the 6th time he did this I was late in stopping him and he stuck his thick drunk skull into the ceiling fan. The thunk-thunk-thunk that the fan blades made careening off his melon were very satisfying, so as I walk over to him he was looking at me with these pained puppy eyes that seemed to ask me “ why did you make the fan try to chop off my head?” I just looked at him and told him;
“I fucking told you to stop doing that…now you know why”
I had some drunk frat rat piss on my blackjack dealer one night because he didn’t want to walk all the way across the bar to the rest room. She , god bless her, punched him in the face and threw him out the back door with his drunk little thing still sticking out.
Then there was the guy who refused to order a rum and coke, he felt the need to always call it by its scientific name, a “Cuba Libre”, not that he was a big problem, but he was always annoying.
But the point here is the reason I was an asshole is because I couldn’t figure out why more people didn’t just want to sit and talk, or dance, in a responsible drunk manner instead of a “I need a baby sitter, because I am 9 years old” drunk manner. They would break things on purpose, punch holes in the walls, the chicks…fuck, those dirty, stinky sorority whores would fill the trash can with piss every night (our bathroom was a single seater) since they travel in packs of no less than 3 they would race for the toilet, and loser squatted over the trashcan. I shit you not there has never been a more disgusting animal invented then the sorority bitch. My customers would lie, steal, cheat and think it was just hysterical.
Basically they treated the place like shit, like we owed it to them to provide a place for them to act like jerk offs because they knew that anywhere else they would get thrown in jail for ½ the shit they were doing.
And that Irked me.
So I became a royal asshole. They wanted to act like spoiled kids I would treat them like spoiled kids. I thumped their ears when they acted up, put them in time outs, and on occasion spanked them.
I was also constantly under a barrage of stupid questions, IE:
1) What can I get for you? …uuuhhh Gimme a beer! ( we served 5 on tap and 40 in bottles)
2) Walking through an open door..”Are you open? (If I wasn’t do you think the door would be open?)
3) Whysh cant eyes have more beers? Because you just yakked, I saw you! And I can smell it go away!
Now you know what caused me to be a Cranky old fucker. It was those goddamned kids!
Unfortunately I also demanded that these same people be courteous, reasonable, and respectful to each other, and my bar. (I know it wasn’t ‘my’ bar but I was in charge and I did a good job) Unfortunately, as I grew older and wiser, the people that I was serving were not ready to be respectful social drinkers. My crowd was the fraternities and sororities of Chico State.
Some of you, of a certain age, may remember Chico State from the late 80’s where they celebrated Pioneer Days and MTV even went as far as to put a map up every hour for a week solid on how you could get to Chico California for this amazing party. Playboy rated it the number one party school in the nation. That year was the last year for Pioneer Days as it was also the first time that there were 4500 arrests (none of those people Chico State students, ALL out of towners) and huge riot where a cop car and a news wagon were set on fire along with a trash bin and all the furniture out of every apartment in a complex called “the Zoo”.
At the time I was not there. I was in college elsewhere causing my own riots. April 25th 1987 were the riots and I didn’t get there until September of 88. So none of that shit was my fault.
My clients acted much like that of rioters on a nightly basis. With the exception of fighting which only happened 4 times in the 6 years I was at the bar, and only one of them a full blown street melee, it was relatively blood free. I am speaking more of the inane stupidity that is the mob mentality. I had drunks that would inevitably get so intoxicated they would think that because I was sober I was also somehow less smart then they were. One night I was repeatedly telling one of my favorite regulars to stop trying to stand on the bar stool, and he kept ignoring me because he knew that if he could just stand on the bar stool he would be able to dance 63% better than any white man in the place.
I stopped him from getting all the way erect 4 maybe 5 times, the second I would get distracted by someone at the door, he was back on the stool wanting to stand up. Well the 6th time he did this I was late in stopping him and he stuck his thick drunk skull into the ceiling fan. The thunk-thunk-thunk that the fan blades made careening off his melon were very satisfying, so as I walk over to him he was looking at me with these pained puppy eyes that seemed to ask me “ why did you make the fan try to chop off my head?” I just looked at him and told him;
“I fucking told you to stop doing that…now you know why”
I had some drunk frat rat piss on my blackjack dealer one night because he didn’t want to walk all the way across the bar to the rest room. She , god bless her, punched him in the face and threw him out the back door with his drunk little thing still sticking out.
Then there was the guy who refused to order a rum and coke, he felt the need to always call it by its scientific name, a “Cuba Libre”, not that he was a big problem, but he was always annoying.
But the point here is the reason I was an asshole is because I couldn’t figure out why more people didn’t just want to sit and talk, or dance, in a responsible drunk manner instead of a “I need a baby sitter, because I am 9 years old” drunk manner. They would break things on purpose, punch holes in the walls, the chicks…fuck, those dirty, stinky sorority whores would fill the trash can with piss every night (our bathroom was a single seater) since they travel in packs of no less than 3 they would race for the toilet, and loser squatted over the trashcan. I shit you not there has never been a more disgusting animal invented then the sorority bitch. My customers would lie, steal, cheat and think it was just hysterical.
Basically they treated the place like shit, like we owed it to them to provide a place for them to act like jerk offs because they knew that anywhere else they would get thrown in jail for ½ the shit they were doing.
And that Irked me.
So I became a royal asshole. They wanted to act like spoiled kids I would treat them like spoiled kids. I thumped their ears when they acted up, put them in time outs, and on occasion spanked them.
I was also constantly under a barrage of stupid questions, IE:
1) What can I get for you? …uuuhhh Gimme a beer! ( we served 5 on tap and 40 in bottles)
2) Walking through an open door..”Are you open? (If I wasn’t do you think the door would be open?)
3) Whysh cant eyes have more beers? Because you just yakked, I saw you! And I can smell it go away!
Now you know what caused me to be a Cranky old fucker. It was those goddamned kids!
