This One's On Me: I Have Seen Some Shit
There's a reason bartenders develop a 1,000 yard stare and remain calm in a tornado of chaos — they've seen everything imaginable
“What’s the craziest thing that’s ever happened at the bar?! You must see some shit!?”
This is the inevitable question asked of me upon meeting new people in social settings. It’s like meeting a surgeon, you immediately want to ask what's the grossest thing he’s ever seen. And to answer the question, yes, I have seen some SHIT. The craziest thing is that the craziest thing that has ever happened at the bar hasn’t happened yet. You have to understand, when alcohol and humans are involved there is no ceiling to bizarre and ridiculous. Once a night I find myself, asking, out loud, “What in the Terry Funk just happened?!” There is no limit to jack-assery, stupidity, and general buffoonery. Especially when you add alcohol.
Last week the craziest thing that happened was finding a digital camera in the U bend of one of our toilets. IN THE U BEND. So you accidentally drop your camera (or phone) into the toilet, it sucks for sure, we’ve all been there. Common, sober, sense tells you to alert someone on staff so they can get to it. Yeah, the camera is fucked still but the night goes on. From here on out I can only speculate as to what transpired, but I assure you it was not common sense. The guest, now panicked and alone in the bathroom, decided to destroy any evidence of their folly and tried to flush it away like something shameful, not a hard plastic and rectangular chunk of technology. I imagine it was quite a few flushes before that genius moment really hit. When they realized that water alone wasn’t going to move this rectangular brick down the circular hole they resorted to base mammalian tool use. Like the first monkey to use a stick to scratch their back, this is a spark of pure revelation for our guest on their quest, and they grab the plunger from its base and start to use it like a battering ram. The sheer time and effort this person must have taken is, I must say, impressive. They jammed the whole goddamn camera so deep there was no evidence. Only a clogged overflowing toilet after the next few guests flushed and flushed. Finally, someone alerted me and I had to put an out-of-order sign on it. It was two days of snaking the toilet until frustration defeated us, and we had to know what could be blocking the pipe. We unbolted it from its place and took it out back like a once loved, but now rabid dog. Hammers in hand, we had to know. With one fell swoop the porcelain shatters to show us the culprit. Son of a bitch. Two days and a couple hundred bucks for a new toilet and all I can think about is if the memory card on the digital camera would still work and show us our perpetrator.
That was last week, and that could have been worse. I once was at work when a gentleman took a shit in the urinal (I told you I’ve seen some shit). Just left a steamer there and walked out. It was a perfect crime and it still haunts me.
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