Customers O' the Night(s).

There have been so many recently that I couldn't possibly keep up. Here are a few examples:

#123: The Fat Mouth Breather is becoming a bit of a regular. I would normally ignore a person's weight and possibly even the fact that they were constantly walking around with their mouth hanging open if they were not the sort of person who insisted on Talking To My Tits whenever they were at the bar. Honestly, this guy has never once made eye contact with me while I was close enough to take his order. He also likes to hold on to his money for longer than is necessary, presumably to extend the amount of contact that his hand has with mine. He is vile and creepy and I do my best to avoid waiting on him whenever possible.

#486: A few weeks ago, we were closing up and a drunk chick wandered in alone at around two-thirty (We close at two, but are not required to empty the building until quarter to three) to use the bathroom. I normally try to stop people from doing this if they were not actually customers at our bar, but I was particularly tired that night so I let her go. I continued to re-stock beer and clean up. At around three, I was summoned by the door guys to the bathroom. The girl was passed out, panties around her knees and skirt around her waist, bent over completely so that her hands and her hair were on the floor in front of her. She was fast asleep. And snoring.
I started talking to her, tapping her on the shoulder and eventually shaking her to try and wake her up.
Eventually I raided her purse, found her cell phone, and dialed the last number that had called in (which was twenty minutes before). The girl who picked up the phone was confused at first, but I managed to convey to her that I was in the bathroom with her passed out friend and i needed help getting her out ASAP.
"I can't come and get her because I am at a party right now and I have been drinking and I am under age and the cops are outside. I can't leave." Great.
I found out her name (appropriately stripper-like, it was), hung up the phone, and pulled her to a sitting position, slapping both sides of her face gently while repeating her name.
"Pull your panties up sweetie, it's time to go." She didn't want to go. She didn't want to wake up, but she did have the good sense to cover herself when I sat her up, so I knew she was at least that aware of her situation.
Luckily there was another female bartender on staff that night, because this girl was BIG- Not fat, mind you, but a head taller than me and a good bit meatier. Once we got her to cover herself, it took both of us to hoist her off the toilet and onto her feet. From there she seemed to take control for the most part, and we just steered her (on her high heeles, of course) out of the loo and up to the front door, where she turned and hugged me and kissed me on the cheek and told me that i rocked and that she loved me and that I was her hero.
It was bizarre. She seemed perfectly coherent, as if she had just woken up from a nap (which I guess she had) and was a bit groggy but in total control. We watched as she crossed the street and tried to hail a cab. Two bike cops were standing on the corner and ignored her completely. Eventually I flagged down a cab and sent it over to her.

#222: Game Day is my least favorite day. Worse than New Year's Eve, Fat Tuesday, or even St. Patrick's day, Game day is Amateur Night with 85,000 performers, most of whom have been drinking for at least eight hours by the time I encounter them. Last night I got to deal with my first amateur foursome as soon as I got in the door. They were loud, they thought they were cool and funny, and they were demanding. The Jackass Group Leader kept ordering drinks and shots for himself and his three friends even though they obviously didn't want to drink more. What happened is what often happens in these situations: his friends don't have enough balls to tell the guy that they are done. Nobody wants to be the "pussy" that gives in first, so they all keep buying rounds. Jackass Group Leader decides to chat me up, since the girl who has been serving them all day has already given up on getting them to close their tabs and has moved on to the "ignore them and hope they'll go away" stage of customer service. So the guy remarks on my shirt- which, like most of my shirts, is a band t-shirt.
"Are they any good?"
"No. They suck. I try to make a habit of advertising for bands that I hate." I was smiling when I said this. The smile was an indication that I was joking, but that he knew the answer to the question before he asked me and that I was "on" to his game- trying to engage me in conversation that wasn't going to go anywhere. I am not flattering myself. I had already seen him chatting up two other chicks who had the ability to walk away from him and did.

"Ah HA!" he replied, a bit more angrily than was necessary under the circumstances. "Smart ass bartenders don't make good tips."

Okay, so what I should have said here was something like "On the contrary, sir, I make a lot of money from people who are smart enough to understand when a person is playfully kidding and confident enough not to take themselves too seriously. In fact, most people like it when you are a bit of a smartass, since they are so used to being Bullshat in their everyday exchanges with service industry people who are required to exchange specific pleasantries and pretend that they give a shit about customers."
That is not what I said. I believe I said something about having already written the day off due to the number of drunk idiots I encounter on game day. He insisted that he was a good tipper. I didn't believe him and I didn't care.
He went on to "compliment" a door guy about his hair and fashion sense (which he described as "totally rock and roll, dude"), and then try to engage said door guy in a conversation about music. "I'm a drummer, dude, so I know." What he knew I didn't quite understand. What he obviously didn't know was when to shut the fuck up and go home. I switched into uber-polite mode, encouraging them to try out the strip club or perhaps get something to eat. It worked and they left. His friends tipped me well.


#357: Dirty Diana is a regular. Until recently, her identity has not been known to us, but her prolific use of a sharpie marker in our ladies' room has made her a subject of regular discussion. "Dirty Diana Loves Teabags!" has adorned the wall of the first stall for so long that I can't remember when it got there. And of late one of my co-workers has made it her mission to remove D.D.'s scrawlings from said wall on a regular basis, since we often have an older more mature crowd during football season- including the owner's parents.
I do not, as a rule, consider graffiti "art" or even "free expression." (I make an exception here for Banksy and others who paint murals and interesting stuff to look at- they've helped me pass the time on public transportation many a time). It is, in most cases, pure and simple vandalism, and it is a big pain in the ass to remove from the walls. When the walls are clean, they usually stay that way for quite some time. Once somebody writes anything up there, though, it's game on, and within a week or two he whole thing is a mess again.
Occasionally, somebody writes something that I find particularly clever or funny ("Sodomatic for the People" and "Lester is Coming- Look Busy!") spring to mind), but for the most part people are generally ignorant and crass. In any case, The D.D situation was reaching a boiling point for my diligent co-worker, and when I finally identified D.D. my boss approached her and politely asked that she stop writing on the walls. She seemed embarrassed, but by her reaction I could tell that it was never a malicious thing- she was making a joke with her friends who are also regulars, and (I suspect she thought), with us as well.
This was about a week ago. Last night after close, one of the door guys came to get me and asked me to come with him to the ladies' room.
"Fuck! Is somebody passed out in there again?"
"No. I need you to see this."
I was expecting to find something broken, or a leaky toilet, or a pint glass in the bottom of a bowl. What I found instead was about twenty post-it notes, scattered in the first stall, each one adorned with the same message in hot pink sharpie: "Dirty Diana Loves Teabags!" Now that, my friends, is art. Or at least it is a very funny practical joke. I think I like this Diana.