Sorry for my MIA status lately. Life, it seems, has taken over and so I have been much busier than normal, thus minimizing my blog time. With summer being in full swing and me working as a bartender, my days and nights are filled to the brim! The bar I work in is your typical bar in that we serve alcoholic beverages and people come to partake in said beverages. It is not your typical bar in that the owners try to run a clean and respectable establishment. A task made more difficult by the fact that the bar is surrounded by roadside motels, trailer parks… and I’m not talking about your high class manufactured housing communities with gates and a community pool, cement driveways and carports. Noooo, I’m talking about your single wide with a trailer hitch on blocks to keep it from rolling with a broken down rusted out car in the dirt driveway that the toothless old drunks park their aluminum lawn chairs in while downing their Pabst Blue Ribbons in a can or Mad Dog 20 20s in a brown bag, kind of trailer park. And those are the higher class housing communities as just behind (at least on of the) trailer parks there is/are tent cities. We have other people that frequent the bar as well as the residents of the various above-mentioned dwellings. But I think that, that’s because the owners are so diligent in keeping most of the riff raff out. Now where the riff raff live, is not what makes them riff raff. Nope, what makes them riff raff is the fact that they are rude, usually unemployed, drunk and they never know when enough is enough.

The guy in the disguise

Take for example this guy who walked in and as he passed me, the owner and another waitress, he took it upon himself to grab the other waitress’s ass. The waitress looked down at him as she is about 5′11′ tall and he was about 5′4″ tall, poked him and said “HEY! Don’t touch me!” One would think that given that fair warning, this man would have been on his best behavior. Ya think? Well if he had been then that would be the end of my story and not a very good one at that. No, this guy sidles up to another female (a patron) at the end of the bar and proceeds to start talking to her, then caressing her head, and finally proclaiming his love for her at which point she not so politely requested that he leave her alone and moved to another chair at the bar where there was someone else on either side of her. Not one to be so easily discouraged, the man eyeballed me as I passed him and proceeded to try and engage me in some more of the same type of interaction he was attempting with the other women in the bar but when I passed him without so much as a glance he decided to go and stalk some easier prey at the tables in the bar. He stopped at a table where two women sat and stood there with his best game face on for about 2 minutes, then left. Later when I went to ask them if they would like another drink, they requested that if ‘that guy came back to their table, could I please ask him to leave or at least leave them alone as he had asked one of them (sisters) if she wanted him to “lick her ______” …yeah, his words, not mine. At this point the owner who had been keeping her eye on him, decided that enough was enough and escorted him to the door and informed him that he was not allowed to come back. The end right? NO! About 45 minutes later, he comes sauntering back in, but in disguise…I’m only assuming that he thought he was in disguise as his hair was down from the pony tail it had been in and he had taken off his top shirt, leaving him wearing the same shorts, same shoes and his wife beater undershirt. I am further assuming that he thought he was pretty well disguised as when he was again approached by the owner he acted as though this was the first time that evening he had been there!! He argued a bit and finally accepted defeat and left… at least until next time.

Two guys from Alabama

Two guys walk into a bar…. No really these two guys walked into the bar and went to the side room to play pool. I approached them in order to take their order and then asked if they wanted to run a tab.

guy 1- Sure, we’ll run a tab.

me- Okay great. Do you have a credit card to hold the tab?

guy 1- Yes.

***

me- Okay, I’ll need your credit card to hold the tab.

guy 1- okay

***

me- May I have your credit card in order to hold the tab? We’re not gonna run it. We just need it in order to open a tab for you.

guy 1- You’ll get my credit card when I get my drinks.

***

guy 2- I’m sorry ma’am…we’re from Alabama and he’s just not used to how y’all do things down here…he’ll be alright, once he gets the drinks.

Fine. I went to get the drinks and asked the bartender to wait on the tab as I’d be back with the credit card or cash in one minute.

When I got to the tables. I put the drinks on the table and once again asked whether or not they wanted to run a tab. Guy 1 looked at me suspiciously but tentatively handed over the credit card and thanked me. As the night wore on they kept ordering rounds of Bud in a bottle and with each round, I had to explain the process of holding the credit card. I had assure him that no drinks were being charged to his card, much less anyone else’s. After round three, guy 1 decided to sit at the bar (yeay me!) and I was happy to get rid of him, the bartender could have the damned tip…

After a while the bartender asked me why I sent him to the bar, as he was about getting on her nerves with questions over the credit card….I shrugged, apologized and moved on. A few minutes later things just escalated between him and the bartender as he started accusing her of stealing from him. And that he knew what kind of place this was and he knew what kind of people we were. At this point the owner stepped in and asked if there was a problem. He politely said no. The peace lasted all of another two to three minutes when he started in on the bartender again. At which point the owner told him it was probably best that he cash out. She rang him up, showed him the tab and he sheepishly agreed to pay with the card we had been holding once he realized that everything was on the up and up. End of story again…right? Nope, not even close. Guy1 apologized and asked if he could re open his tab. The owner agreed with some trepidation. I was caught up so I went behind the bar to wash some glasses. Guy 1 started talking to me…telling me how beautiful he thought I was. I just kept thanking him and kept doing the dishes and tried to avoid engaging him in any kind of conversation. Then he said. “You sure are a beautiful woman. You know, where I come from men like me fall in love with women like you everyday…know why?” I responded that I did not. He mumbled something about looking “indian” and then said…”you sure are a beautiful woman…but why’d you let yourself get so big?”. For those of you that are under the impression that I am a tiny, skinny mini- girl…I am not. Nope. I’m not “riding a motorized shopping cart through Wal-Mart big”, but I’m definitely not a size 4 either. Nope yours truly has a little somethin’ somethin’ extra, in some of the right places…others she could do without the extra stuffage. Anywho, his comment floored me and I just kinda said…um, I dunno, and walked away. Do you think enough is enough yet? How ’bout nope not yet. After several minutes, guy 1 decides that it’s getting hot in heeeere, he is getting so hot, he wants to take his clothes off and so he did. Just his shirt but after the night we had been having, enough was definitely enough! Out he went with guy 2 in tow. I kinda thought that was wrong as guy 2 had done nothing but feed the pool tables all night, but in retrospect probably a good idea so that guy 1 would not come back in the name of his friend. Oh yeah and the last few Bud bottles ended up being on the house as the owner just gave him back his credit card without ringing anything up.

Oh well, such is bar life I guess. And that’s all for now.

Ciao! Hasta la pasta baby!