When I met you in the restaurant

You could tell I was no debutante... Dreaming, Blondie

So I am working one day in the big bar/restaurant and in comes two guys and a girl. They come over to the corner of our bar and order three of the giant 32 oz. beers, and happily start drinking. Mind you this is at around 6pm on a Friday, they are dressed in office attire, and look to be having a happy hour. VERY ordinary people for this area of town, even attractive if you will. Well the girl starts shamelessly flirting with Noah and I and it is becoming increasingly obvious that she is pretty drunk. Drunk, but coherent and having a good time so we think. Ok, just keep an eye on her as she is like 5'3" and a soaking wet 115 lbs. Well guess who is finished first with her 32 ozs. of beer? Yup. Hey Noah, I love the way that you pour...can I have another beer? Hey JCL, I love your little sideburns. Can I have some more beer? Noah turns around to hand her a beer, and she is gone and the two dudes she was with are cracking up, rolling, tears welling in their eyes. As we start to ask where did she "disappear" to, it is evident that she has just slipped off of her stool into a drunken pile of passed out mush on the bar rail underneath the bar. NOT the way to impress your manager at the start of a busy Friday night! This type of thing always pissed off "Mr Burns" the annoying night manager, but all we did was serve her a single beer. It turned out that we were their last stop and that they had been drinking since leaving work just after lunch, making their way down to the river, which we were right next to.

Then there was this other time that I was managing at this crappy Tex-Mex place. It had been an uneventful shift at this dead restaurant, and one that was drawing to a close. That is when one of the waitstaff comes running up to me as I am in the office. "JCL, you better come quick, someone is vomiting all over the smoking section!" Oh crap. Sure enough, there is a woman in there probably 40, a little trashy but otherwise normal looking except for the fact that she has evacuated the contents of her stomach onto the floor of the smoking section. She is the only one in there (phew), and she REEKS of tequila, bad tex-mex and vomit. She is barely coherent, nearing alcohol poisoning. FUCK! Can you respond? Can you hear me? What is your name? She is barely in control, but I make a judgment call and decide against calling an ambulance. She is just LOADED. That is when "Soweta," a Somali server "with zero wait experience and was hired simply because when she applied, she put that she was ready to work any hours, and on any day and was willing to learn the ropes" enters the room. At these types of restaurants (think chains with many entrees for less than $10) the caliber of new hires is greatly reduced. Suweta has a look of concern on her face, and asks where's the guy that she was with? She appears to not even care about the vomit all over the floor. Soweta has a check in her hands with 24 shots of tequila on it along with 2 orders of fajitas. TWENTY-FOUR!! The check is for over $150, and now I have a missing man, a vomiting woman, and a stupid server. I turn to Soweta and ask her "How could you serve someone 24 shots of tequila?" Soweta responds, "they asked me for them?" I tell her, "Soweta, you can't serve ANYONE, even your best friend a dozen shots of tequila. Didn't it occur to you that this would happen? They could get sick, they could even die?" Her response was classic: "Good." Me: "WHAT?!" She shrugs her shoulders, and matter-of-factly tells me "Well I don't drink. If they wanted to kill themselves with alcohol, then I will let them." Incredulously, I ask "Don't you remember in those classes and training about serving people who were drunk? That they were not to be served anything other than food?" Her excuse? "I am a Muslim, and I feel like if they want to kill themselves with alcohol, then I will let them." This was 1996. The dude was never found, the chick walked off somewhere, the bill was never paid and had to be comped, and Soweta went to work in a video store. We also had to write up the bartender (who was like 60, and had worked there for like 20 years) who hadn't noticed that he had poured 24 shots over the course of two hours for the same damn two top.

Then there are the bachelorette parties. Most come in starting around 10pm, and are often already roaring drunk. The "bride-to-be" usually has the fake veil, and often has a t-shirt made up for the night. I have seen this one numerous times: A t-shirt with candies stitched to it, placed strategically along with types of shots. "Buttery Nipple" is written right on one of her boobs, with a hersheys kiss stitched there. The guy who buys her a buttery nipple is supposed to eat the candy that he removes...You get the picture. The bartenders job is to shamelessly flirt and proposition the bride to be, tell her how hot she is and how lame it is that she is "off the market." I know that I have told everyone here that I have always been crushingly shy, and that is true. For some reason or another, it is minimized while behind a bar. Noah on the other hand, is anything but shy. He is loud and funny, obnoxious and charming all at the same time. People had often commented that we made a great pair because I was the straight guy to his wild man. I was Dean Martin, Noah the Jerry Lewis. So we are playing it up one night with a group of these girls, and Noah decides that the perfect drink for this bride to be is the "blowjob." Weak drink, fun to see. For those uninitiated, it is basically a shot glass with Kahlua and Baileys with some whipped cream PILED on the top. The bride to be then has to put her hands behind her back and somehow get her mouth over all the whipped cream, grab the glass with her open mouth and tilt her head back spilling the liqeurs into her open mouth. It usually makes for quite a sight. Well I have no idea what lucky groom got this bride to be, but after the shot she insisted on giving Noah a return blow-job, right in the back room of the place. Her friends were not even taken aback. Classy.