DID I MISS A FULL MOON?
It's 5:15am. Normally I'd be settling in for a nice snooze after a long night at the bar. However, in this case, I find myself sitting up on the computer, waiting for the sun to rise. Why? Let me re-cap the evening and then you'll figure it out yourself.
I arrive for my shift at around 6pm. It's Happy Hour and the crowd is decent, if not mellow. The streets are pretty empty for a Friday, which usually indicates that the exodus for the Hamptons/Jersey Shore is in full effect. That usually means that the night itself will be a wildcard....unpredictable at best.
At around 9pm the bar begins to swell with revellers looking for a good time. Within the masses there was a particular group from Brooklyn that concerned me a bit. There were probably eight guys in the group, typical frat boys looking for a good time. While I never get in the way of people having fun, you just had a feeling that with this group the potential for trouble was there. So while I monitored the growing crowd of customers, I made it a point to keep a keen eye on them. At one point the bar was so full, that I found myself constantly having to deal with ID's, crowd control and people walking in and out for smoking breaks. I turn my head for a moment to check on the back of the bar and "CRASH"..... My worst fears were realized. There was a fist-sized hole in one of the front window panes and one of the Frat Boys standing next to it with glass shards in his hair. I immediately run over to see if he was okay. He had some small knicks on his forhead and trickles of blood on his head. I immediately guided him and one of his friends toward the bathroom to get cleaned up; While they were in the bathroom, I went back to the window to try to get some sembelence of what happened. One of the patrons told me that he saw a fist from outside come through the window after one of the Frat Boys gave someone outside the "finger". I go outside and of course, there was no one to be found. I flag down a cop to explain what happened and to see what recourse I had regarding the window. Mr. Policeman said that while the customer who gave the finger was "an asshole" for doing so, the person liable for the window, unfortunately, was the jackass who punched it. And of course, he was long gone..... And the night only got better from there.
Once I got the Frat Pack to leave, I had to deal with numerous idiots with ID's so pathetically fake, I started confiscating them. I had this girl, for example, who was 5'6, brown hair, brown eyes in her license, yet the person giving me the license was at least 5'9, blond hair, blue eyes.....WTF? It's interesting to see folks crumble when you say that you are going to turn their ID's in to the police dept. The confessions start pouring out from there. Then you have your usual suspects, the drunks, the drama queens, etc... a typical night at the bar, times ten.
All told, even with all of the aggravations of the evening, the bar did very well, my bartenders and barback worked hard and did a good job, and everyone went home unharmed.
And all I have to do is wait for the sun to rise.... *sigh*
NUFF SAID
1 comment:
i worked my way through college cocktailing in bars starting when i was a mere 18 years old. at my first job, a popular club in my southern city, i also worked the door one night a week (which was funny considering how grossly underage i was myself). i remember exactly how ridiculous the fake ids would get and irate people became when you questioned them about it. i swear i remember once confiscating an id because it was clearly the wrong gender...a girl actually tried to use a guy's id. ridiculous.
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