Close Call

Well, something caught my eye and sounded interesting so I'm posting it, despite the fact I said I probably wouldn't.

This illustrates why downtown can be very dangerous. And this is only one kid who had the balls - or the stupidity - to announce that he was carrying a gun while drunk in a bar. I know, for a fact, that many other people don't announce that they're carrying. And trust me, they're downtown every night.

I've seen with my own eyes people carrying pistols while they're downtown drinking. Then you get a little alcohol in them combined with pissing them off, and you end up with a scene like the one that happened in front of Insomnia several years back and then you have a dead 18 year old kid on your hands.

This is where little issues really make themselves into big ones. You're drinking in a bar, having fun, and some kid shoulders you trying to make their way through the crowd. Or he's staring at you and your "crew" or checks out your "bitch". You don't like it, so words are exchanged. You take it outside and the 12 budweisers you've drank bring you to the brink much more quickly than you would have been if you had been sober. But you're not. You're 19 and drunk and nobody fucks with you. At that point, you're so mad the only thing that makes sense to do is to pull out your illegally carried pistol and empty it into the guy thats pissing you off. Now your little, meaningless issue is a big one because you're now a murderer.

And then you spend the next 20 years to life in prison because you thought going downtown and drinking underaged and illegally carrying a pistol and shooting someone who "dissed" you was the best solution to your problems.

Bravo to the police officers who arrived on scene quickly and took this asshat down. If he didn't do it this weekend, it looks like he was on track to live out the scenario above very soon in his life. I'm really glad it didn't play out like that.

Be safe out there and Merry Christmas.

Last Post of 2007

Unless I'm sporadically inspired, there will be no more posts on here until the new year. I'm on a nice, long break and I'd like to make my break all-encompassing by focusing on as few bar related things as I can.

Until then, Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

And make sure you little fuckers act halfway decent when you're out drinking during the holidays.

A Snippet of my Weekend

Story #1

"You can't come in. You have to be 21 to enter. Sorry, man." I said to the underaged kid.

"But I'll be 21 in three weeks. Come on! My friend is 21!" he whined back, gesturing towards the guy next to him.

"How does that make you any less underage again?" I asked.

Silence.

Story #2

"Sorry, you can't come in. This ID is fake."

"No problem. Thanks." I handed him his ID back - only because he was nice and I'm not always an asshole.

"What the fuck?" screeched the girl who I had just let in before rejecting him. She came tearing out the front door and confronted me, face to face.

"Why won't you let him in?" she demanded of me.

"Uhhh...because he's not 21?" I responded.

"Yes he is! See? He has an ID!"

"Well...having a shitty fake doesn't make you 21. Sorry."

"Hey man, no problem. Let's not worry about it," he said, backing away from the door obviously not ready for any issues regarding his fake ID.

"No worries," I said to him.

"No!" demanded the girl, stopping his backwards movement away from me by grabbing his shirt. "Can't you just let him in?"

"He's not 21. I can't." I stated, matter-of-factly.

"Fuck you! You're an asshole. Just let him in! There's tons of underaged kids in there"

"What the hell?" I asked, starting to raise my voice. "How in the fuck is that my problem? They managed to find their way inside, what's his deal?" I said, motioning towards the kid, who was starting to look extremely uncomfortable by this point.

"This is bullshit," the girl said and stomped the ground, pouting.

"This entire conversation is bullshit, and now you get to find yourself another bar to go to because you can't just accept the fact that you're not getting what you want. Goodbye."

She was then led away from the door and wasn't allowed back inside the rest of the night.

Just another night...

Drugs

You can get drugged going downtown, especially if you're a girl.

Most people drug others in order to lower their inhibitions so they can take that person home and have their way with them.

To say it's a pathetic move by a desperate guy is putting it lightly. And it happened to my friend last night, and it's happened to some of my friends before. Be careful.

Two simple rules can help you avoid getting drugged while you're downtown drinking yourself into a stupor anyway:

1) Don't leave your drink unattended

2) Don't accept open drinks from people you don't know (besides the bartender, of course)

That's it. You'll probably never get drugged if you follow those 2 simple rules. So do it.

And on a sidenote, if you're a guy who likes to go out and take advantage of drunk girls - or worse - try to slip some GHB, Special K, or roofies into girls drinks and I catch you, you had better hope we aren't alone.

Graduation is tomorrow so I expect downtown to be pretty busy. I'll tell you all about it soon.

Reading Material

I found an article online titled, Bouncers Aren't Always Right.

It's an interesting read, but also a common argument from people who have never worked in a bar. It's those same people who come into a bar and won't see it from our point of view even though we've seen it from their point of view as a customer.

I can respond to that article with two words:

Tough Shit.

You don't like how you were treated in a bar by an employee? Go somewhere else. You were rejected at the door because you'd had too much to drink, even though you think that you haven't? Tough. Go somewhere else. You get thrown out because you happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? Tough. We're right and you're wrong. Every time. We're right because we make the rules and you're wrong because you broke 'em.

I've got news for you. Bars aren't fair. Nowhere did it say when you entered that we were obligated to let you stay. We make the rules in the bar, and if you don't agree with it, go somewhere else. Bars are not democracy's. They're dictatorships. The doorman and bartender are the dictator and whatever they say goes.

I know it sounds like macho bullshit, but thats just the way it is. To take another approach to the situation would result in the customers running the show, and that doesn't fly. Drunk people will take advantage of you every chance they get, and we're here to make sure that doesn't happen.

There's no guarantee that your night won't be "ruined" because of a bouncer or because you happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but thats the risk that you run when you come out drinking. That's just the reality.

If the worst thing that happens to you is you get booted out of a bar for something that you feel wasn't fair, then consider yourself lucky. You didn't get beat up, arrested, robbed or drugged. As long as you make it home safe, then I'd just be thankful for that.

And in case you've already forgetten...we're always right and you're always wrong.

Always.

A Sad Day

This is just a shame.

This man had no regard for anyone or anything besides trying to get their hands on easy money, regardless of the outcome.

I hope this coward is caught, convicted and executed as quickly as possible. A piece of scum like this doesn't deserve to breathe.

My thoughts and prayers are with the family of the victim.

To Clarify...

A few posts ago I mentioned that come January 1st, bar employees couldn't drink anymore on the job. I guess I wasn't very clear on what I understand the law to be, so I'll go into a little detail here.

Apparently, when the county commissioners office passed a few new laws, one being that you have to be 21 to work in a bar downtown (which actually doesn't go into effect until the summer), they slid another law into the mix that prohibits bar employees from drinking while they're at work.

This is what I've been told, so I'm not entirely sure how accurate it is, but it certainly was more than what we had expected. In addition to being 21 to work in a bar and having to charge a minimum price after a certain time, oh by the way, we can't drink anymore when we're at work on the clock.

What the hell?

This is a big fucking deal to those I happen to mention it to. Which, so far, no one seems aware of when I tell them of what I've heard.

99% of the guys I've talked to, even at other bars, hate the idea. As I mentioned before, I don't think it's a bad idea for reasons previously mentioned, but I do think that the overly controling Athens-Clarke County government doesn't need to be the one who decides whether we can drink at work or not. That's up the owner and management of a business, not the fucking government. We may as well go back to prohibition the way things are going around here lately.

So in about 3 1/2 weeks, we'll see what happens. Stay tuned.

Highlights of the Weekend

I've learned to never underestimate the stupidity of drunk college kids. But sometimes I forget what I've learned. Which is why I was fairly suprised Friday night.

In a similiar blog, an author writes about his experiences working in a nightclub, and one story he tells is about a drunk kid pissing on another drunk kid in the middle of his nightclub.

Well, we had something similiar happen to us this weekend.

While I wasn't the floor guy who caught him, they told me that they saw him go through the whole process before they could stop him, and when they told him to stop peeing on the side of the bar, he responded that he was too lazy to walk all the way to the bathroom.

He wasn't even drunk. At all.

In other bar related news, one of our upstanding customers was caught red-handed behind the bar stuffing a bottle of our well vodka down his pants.

My reaction?

If I was going to be so brazen as to walk behind a bar to steal liquor then I would:

1) Grab the bottle and get the hell out from behind the bar before I started stuffing it down my pants, and

2) Skip the cheap shit and go straight for the Johnny Walker Blue.

He was lucky he only got kicked out. Depending on what bar a random dude tries to steal liquor from, he's liable to get the shit kicked out of him in the back alley or get arrested, or both.

Besides those two things and various fights and arguments of the type that have been well documented on this blog, the weekend was fairly slow.

A Good Idea

Come Jan. 1, we can't drink on the job anymore.

As much as I hate to admit it, it's a good idea.

A sober doorguy can handle situations much more effectively, stay calm and keep his wits about him.

When I'm working and sober, it takes a whole hell of a lot to push me to the brink of really getting pissed off. A lot. Almost to a flaw.

When I'm drinking, you're just a little frat boy who I'm hoping will run their mouth and square off with me. Just give me an excuse, motherfucker.

And this is why it's good. Because I'm not good at keeping myself in check when I'm working under the influence, and things never turn out well for those on the receiving end when the stars align and somebody catches me on a night where I'm drunk and pissed off.

It'll be interesting to see if employees actually follow this law and it will be even more interesting to see if the police enforce it.

But the bottom line is, if it all goes as planned I think we'll have much fewer problems downtown at the end of the day.