Tales of a Barmaid – part 2

There are many many many many many (many many many many many many many maaaaaaaany) shit bits when it comes to bar work. And it’s hardly surprising: you’re working with drunk idiots. It’s the same whether you work in a little old man’s pub; a club, a student bar… There are ALWAYS funny stories to tell, as the creepy/weird ramble seems acceptable to the public once they’ve had one beer… Like, you don’t get colleagues in an office space asking, “so you’re a vegetarian but still eat cock?” …Actually I’ve never worked in an office so could well do (someone get back to me on that).

Either way, here are a few more stories I have encountered in the wonderful world of bar work. I hope you enjoy reading it more than I enjoyed living it.

1. EVERYONE loses their stuff on a night out… Keys, phone, purse, dignity, virginity (sometimes). It’s a right of passage (maybe not the virginity). I, myself have collected my purse, phone, bank card from countless clubs, and people all around the UK. (I have also made everyone in the club look for a phone that was in my pocket the whole time). So it’s no surprise that at the end of every night there will be about 7 Monzo cards in the lost and found bin along with the odd jacket, a few discarded rings… All sorts.

On one particular occasion, a phone had been discovered in the (pretty grim) bar I was working in. Being the kind souls that we were, myself and another member of staff charged the phone so we could try and reunite the phone with its owner. As soon as it turned on, the phone beeped into life and ping ping pinged with new texts. Texts such as, “mate can I tick one”.

Being the good girl that I am, I had no idea what this meant, so my friend had to explain to me that this was a drug dealer’s phone and someone was trying to get drugs on finance. He sheepishly came by and picked his phone up later that day.

(It should be noted that this was the same bar as the previous drug dealer story… Yeah I wasn’t joking when I said it was grim…)

2. There are many dickheads who would come to the bar mentioned above. need I mention AGAIN the eating cock story? Sometimes it’s because they’re drunk, sometimes they are just born dickheads. But often these dickheads are self-entitled fresh-out-the-womb 18 year olds. (Not all 18 year olds).

Because they are actually 18 and therefore, “grown ups”, they have put their big boy (or girl) pants on and want everyone to treat them like bloody royalty because they now have legitimate IDs. One particular example was when I asked a young lad for his ID…

“What? You’re IDing me?” well yes mate that is my job. “I’m getting ID’d everywhere. what’s that about?!” He whips out a provisional dated January 2001…

“yeah mate, think that’s because you’re 18″… Like… Obviously..

“But I look 23”

“It’s OK, I always get ID’d and I am actually 23” I like to at least try and bond with my customers you know?

“Yeah but you look about 12” …Ah fantastic, the classic “you look 12” comment. I love an uncalled for insult, people are great.

3. There are certain times where all the absolute loonies come out to play… bank holiday weekends, full moons, pretty much any Saturday night actually. But the worst one has to be new year’s eve. Ah, new year… The night that bartenders dread… Managers are kept awake at night, stressing about last minute DJ cancellations… The police officers’ brows sweat picturing the fights in kebab shops they’ll soon be breaking up…

And even regular people don’t enjoy new year’s eve, let’s be real. There’s too much pressure to have a good night; every club is £20 entry and you’re packed in like sardines, or end up celebrating midnight in the hour long queue to get in (been there). So for this reason, I tend to work NYE. Yes the loonies are out but I can’t really turn down time and a half. Plus, in the year I will be discussing, I worked with my boyfriend and was allowed to have a glass of prosecco and a kiss at midnight. So life was sweet.

Of course it was not at all really…

At around 10.30, someone threw up on the bar. Not the first time, and certainly not the last. But it was the aftermath that shook us all. One of the aforementioned loonies decided to scoop up the lumpy chunder and eat it. No I am not taking the piss, yes I am gagging as I relay this story. Someone ate sick off the bar.

And do you know what? That is not the only time I have heard this happening. Another time, outside the same bar, a “hot girl” threw up on her kebab and chucked it aside because, like, it was covered in vomit. My door staff told me that some lad picked up her vomit-kebab and ate it because “she was fit”… Didn’t even pick around the sick either!

4. Is it time for another grim story from that grim bar? Yep, of course it is! This one takes place on a regular Friday night with me sweeping up one of the many mass areas of broken glass with a deck scrubbing brush. For those who don’t know, this is a brush with no bristles in the middle (it’s purpose is for scrubbing cellar floors NOT sweeping), so you can understand that this was a near impossible task that was taking 10+ minutes. I was bent over squinting to search for any more tiny shards of glass (for the safety of customers bear in mind). It was at this moment I felt a fairly hefty kick in the arse. Enough to jolt me forward in shock. I turned around to see two lads, arm round each other, singing along to the DJ, laughing. I actually stared in confusion and then disgust until they wandered off. I moved my gaze to the door where the security were also staring at me as if to say “wtf, did that just happen?!”.

Lucky my door staff are quite lovely and the head doorman ran upstairs, checked the CCTV cameras to find the little fuckers, kicked them out and barred them. So it was good times in the end.

Nah but seriously, what other profession is this kind of sexual harassment considered normal…

5. Another strange one is how regularly I find condoms on the floor. Always out of the packet but I like to think that they haven’t been used. Here’s a selection of some of my favs…

Lovely stuff.

6. I mentioned in my previous bar post that often we are the nutters. I mean I have never eaten sick off a bar, but I have been drunk a fair few times (see featured pic) …I’ve projectiled after doing a shot, I’ve passed out on the floor on the club while my friend insisted to door staff that “she’s fine, she’s not even that drunk” (We were all 18 once) So I can’t be too mad… Especially as it can often be our friends and family being the nightmare ones. Whether it’s a boyfriend offering your staff gear on shift, or a close friend trying to initiate a threesome on the dance floor. Sometimes it’s just best to not let your pals know where you work.

A particularly memorable night was at a club I worked at. My lovely parents and their friends booked a table for the opening night, and my mum insisted on getting the DJ to give me a shout out: “This is a shout-out to Amber working on the bar… You mum says hi and she loves you very much.” What a way to lose any managerial presence to my 20 new staff… and about 300 other people in the venue.

7. This final one wasn’t actually one that I experienced myself, but it did happen to my boyfriend, and it’s so ridiculous that I couldn’t not include it.

My boyfriend was working at a proper old man’s pub at the time. I have worked there in the past, and it can only really be described as a boring, old man regulars pub, the only customers being grumpy boring old men. One day a (grumpy boring old) man walks in, orders a Peroni and waits while the manager on shift pours his pint. The customer then insists that this pint has not been poured to spec. The manager insists that it is Peroni, in a Peroni glass, it has 5% head and there are no lipstick marks to be seen… What more could you want?

The customer then starts getting aggressive and demands that the manager replaces this pint with a new one. The manager insists that there is no point replacing the pint with an identical pint of Peroni. At this point the customer starts yelling, “I’m 62 years old!” Because age is hugely relevant here of course. The manager still refuses to pour a new pint, and so the customer then decides that the only logical thing to do is call the police. Yes the police- you didn’t read that incorrectly…

Honest to god, nutter.

 

I hope you take something from this post… Mainly that people who work in bars are saints for doing what they do. Myself included in that.

Hope you enjoyed this post and it gave you a laugh… Thank you for reading and do us a favour and drop me a follow?

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo