apparently, I suck at my job.

I know that I said I had the night off, but in my normal fashion.. I searched around for anyone who didn't want to work their shift. If I ask for a shift, especially on a weekend, it's about ninety percent likely that I will pick it up. I guess other people have lives.

Anyway, I have a plethora of crap to whine about after last nights debacle. I was first on and it was incredibly slow due to it being fall break (which actually means the students get one whole day off). So at 1030 I was still on by myself and had only sold about 100 worth of liquor/beer. So the manager started cutting people and we ended up with a group of people who don't normally work the front bar. So to say that it was chaotic behind the bar would be an understatement, and to say this put me in a bad mood would be a major understatement.

Well, at 11 a bomb went off somewhere in town and everyone came to take cover in College Bar.
Most of the night went smoothly. The first jerk I encountered came with a group of jerks. I ask the group if they need anything to drink and they list of a whole slew of drinks and shots and hand me two separate credit cards. Fine. Credit cards aren't my favorite because we have one machine and it's on the other side of the bar. But it wasn't that big of a deal.

So then I come back and another person in this group decides he wants a shot and wants me to run his card for four dollars. Now I'm starting to get annoyed. I ask "now does anyone else need anything because this is my last trip to the credit card machine". NO RESPONSE. So I come back and guess freaking what. Oh yeah another one of their friends wants to run their card for shots. Now if it was slow I wouldn't care, but this was right after everyone came rushing in to the bar demanding "drinks! now!"... so I had a lot of people waiting for me to serve them.

I told him I would not run his card right now, but there was an ATM machine directly behind him maybe two steps away. Well, this put him over the edge. He decided I was the worst bartender in the world, and started randomly yelling "YOUUUU SUCKKKKK" at me. Now here I am trying to remember drink orders, tally prices in my head, and make drinks all at the same time. Being yelled at simultaneously really pissed me off. Needless to say after he stopped randomly chanting that I suck he decided to sing about how much I sucked very, very loudly...

Even though there was about two minutes left on the clock I decided I wasn't/didn't need to put up with him. I told my bar back to kick him out while he was continuing to mock me.. so I felt a little bit better about the situation when he got escorted out the door. Why a person feels like they can come to someone's place of employment and degrade them is beyond me.

Lately, we've had problem with tabs. In reality, anyone can come up to the bar, say a last name, and put it on someone else's tab. It makes customers angry when they have extra charges on their tabs that they did not put there.. and rightly so. Well, tonight I had a girl ask for three vodka seven's and handed me her credit card. She said put one of these drinks on this card and two of them on "smith's tab".

Clearly, she was not "Smith" as she had just handed me her credit card. I told her that I could not let her put her drinks on someone else's tab and she got cranky. Then I reminded her that if it her tab someone was trying to put drinks on she would thank me. After that she actually said she understood and told me to put them all on her tab. I didn't understand the attitude at all. Why would you think you could just walk up to the bar and put your drinks that you just ordered on someone else's tab? Hmmm...

Next, my favorite (not!) Wednesday patron came back. He was with a group of girls who he was clearly trying to impress. The lights were on, people were walking out the door, and the time read 1:08 (we close at 1:00). Ok so he walks up to the bar and says "heyyyy remember me?". And between gritting teeth I said "Yes you were the guy who was so rude to me I asked you to leave". And get this he admits to it! He says "well, yeah. but I left you a good tip, remember". HAHAHAHA. Actually sir do you remember demanding that I give you your dollar fifty back because you did not want to tip and told me as much? And this is what I reminded him.

Baffled, he said "ok fine. but why can't you serve me?" Seriously? Maybe I should be easier on him because he is apparently blind and deaf. Can he not see the security team kicking people out? Or the DJ telling people they need to leave. Or here's a clue: the lights turned on eight minutes ago. I explained to him the obvious and he still didn't get it. So I told him to just leave.

Finally, after dealing with two jerks and one annoying customer, we were cleaning the bar. And one of the front bar virgins decides to take down the bar without putting the top on the ice bins. Gross amounts of liquid just poured into the ice bin. I ran over and tried to fix it with napkins and she kept pulling the bar mats down.

I told her to stop because crap was getting into the bin.. a big no-no where we work (obvious sanitary reasons). She preceded to tell me that she didn't "give a crap right now". Why? Because you made a whole whopping 200 dollars on your register? Gee you worked really hard... (that was nine percent of the total sales at the front bar, I got almost six times that on my register). And she will care when she makes a drink for herself and there's crap in it!

All in all, I had a frustrating night.. but at the same time I wasn't even supposed to work, so I have an extra hundred bucks I wouldn't have had otherwise, which makes it worth it to me.