The Tales of a Barmaid

So I’ve worked in a few pubs and bars over the years and have learnt that whenever alcohol is involved, you get a few nutters around, and if we’re honest, we’ve all been the drunk nutters (see featured pic). Over the past 5 or 6 months, however, I have been working in a new bar/pub and the amount of nutters has been much higher than average, I’m sure of it. This can be a little stressful, for example when someone is screaming in your face because they ‘don’t like that bread’ their £1.70 egg on toast was served with. Moments like this one have inspired me to write a post listing some of the times I have truly really questioned why I don’t have a desk job.

So here is my Buzzfeed-style list of alcohol-induced nutters I have come across.

1. This first one comes from when I was working in a student bar. Tt was a Monday night, and the pub was pretty empty so we were closing a little early. A group of people walked in, and so I greeted them with a, “Hi guys, I’m sooooooo sorry but we’ve called last orders so we can’t serve you today, sorry about that!” (I wasn’t that sorry tbf).

“but it says on google that you’re open for another half an hour”

“yeahhhhhhh we’re closing a little early tonight because it’s so quiet, sorry about that!” (again, not particularly sorry).

For some reason this customer then decided that it was acceptable to SPIT over the bar at us (landing on my freshly-mopped floor MIGHT I ADD) and tell us that she hoped our ‘mothers would go die’. It was all pretty weird and dramatic.

2. The next story comes from when I was working at a different pub, a proper locals old man pub, and on this night we were pretty busy for some kind of sport that was on. And by busy I mean, pretty rammo- but not so much that the toilet queues were out the door. So it was pretty surprising that one customer decided against going downstairs to use the loo, and instead started pissing in a flowerpot. For a fake plant. delightful.

3. So where I currently work, we have a DJ on the weekends, and just so you can create a mental picture of what the place is like and what kind of customers we get, you should know that Saturday nights often include old people grinding on one another on the dance floor. So one particular Saturday night I was making a few cocktails for a group of ladies, around mid 30s in age. The leader of the pack asks me, “do you think we’re too old to be in here?” I insisted “noooo, don’t be silly we get such a range of ages in here!” She then told me she used to come in here all the time when she was 18 and got spiked once. “Oooh noooo…..” I sympathised with her. “Yeah,” she continued, “it was bad I couldn’t stop throwing up… And another time I got fingered on the dance floor!” Luckily at this point her friends dragged her away, as I was pretty lost for words.

It should be noted that at the end of this night, we found an opened condom wrapper on the dance floor. I can’t say for certain if it was this woman, but it’s certainly pretty *fishy*… At least the condom-owner was being safe.

4. So this one is very random and includes one of our past regulars. This woman would come in pretty much every day, hang around with the male regulars… She seemed alright, never caused any issues, always called us ‘darling’, but there was something a bit off about her. This was confirmed when a colleague told me, “that lady shits in the street you know…” And not even just the once- apparently it was a pretty regular occurrence.

And if this wasn’t bad enough, a few months down the line, we were told by one of the regulars that she is also a prostitute and she’d slept with most of our other regulars customers. She has recently been barred.

5. the next one occurred, again, in the venue that I now work at. A customer came into the pub one day and told me that it was bringing back memories of when he managed a pub, in the same chain as this one. This guy was a scary dude- super serious and looked like a Disney villain. So when he told me that his venue was shut down because someone was murdered in the toilets, I was completely terrified. When I asked him what happened, he told me “well you know how it gets on a Saturday night.” Clearly I don’t know. He then went and sat down and muttered to himself for the next few hours. It was a less than enjoyable experience.

6. So as mentioned before, some of the weirdest things that happen involve our regulars. Most recent of which happened while talking to a guy at the bar- I had recently told him I was vegetarian and completely out of the blue man goes, “you’re a vegetarian but you still eat cock.” My jaw literally dropped. Which, of course didn’t help my not eating cock case. I was so outraged I didn’t know what to say. He knows nothing about my personal life, I could be a raging lesbian, or ya know, someone who doesn’t ‘eat cock’… it was all very weird, and reminded me, as many days working in bars often do; that people are fucking weird and gross.

7. Finally, this last incident happened not too long ago and is probably one of the weirdest moments of my life. It’s a little bit longer than the previous ones as the story took place over the course of about a 2 hours and there are a lot of weird details. I was working the day shift, and it was only around 10am when a guy walked in. He started chatting to me at the bar as I poured him his shots of sambuca. He started discussing the problems he was having with ‘one of his baby mommas’, and being the polite bartender that I am, I listened to his story. So this woman was kicking off at him, insisting that he must be gay because he was in Brighton (there’s a huge gay scene in Brighton for those who don’t know). He then told me he was very dyslexic and asked if I could help him type out the reference number of the hotel he had been staying in, to prove to this lady friend that he wasn’t actually staying with a man. So I agreed to help.

Somehow this progressed into me texting this woman for around an hour. I tried to find some jobs to do but the pub was dead, so I had no real excuse to run away, and when he told me that he had just got out of prison where he had been for 9 years, I was a bit too scared to be rude to him or tell him to F off. It should also be mentioned that I was on shift with one other person who had popped out during this time, and of course there were a lack of customers in the building at the time, meaning I was pretty much alone with this guy. So the texting continued.

Texts I helped him send to this woman who, FYI, was called ‘rat’ in his phone, included “who the fuck do you think you are talking to me like that, I didn’t break your son’s iPhone.” He wanted me to send messages using some quite racist language, but I managed to persuade him against that.

He insisted that I read out the messages from ‘rat’ to him, some of which included, “who is texting, its not u, ur thick as fuck” and “ive got proof ur gay and im gona show everyone on Facebook,” and of course, “u r gay that’s why your bum was bleeding”… you can’t make this stuff up.

In case you were wondering, he explained to me that the bleeding bum situation was in fact from all the drugs he had been doing. Thanks for that clear up mate. He also mentioned that he reason his phone was so shit was because it was a burner phone and it was mainly used for ‘business’, which was also why he was in Brighton. It was all incredibly shifty and also terrifying. The conversation came to an end when he tried to add me on Facebook but his taxi arrived before the facebook friendship could be made. What a shame.

And that, my friends, is why you shouldn’t work in a bar because it will destroy your soul.

Thank you for reading

xoxoxoxoxoxoxo