Welcome Back!

Every single semester, this is what happens.

The students are psyched to be back in Athens with their friends. Class has started, but it hasn't really started. Everything's fresh again. The weather's changed. Things are different and fun again. It's been a month since most of them have been in town, and it's sucked being at home with mom and dad, so the logical thing happens:

The partying begins. Hard.

We'll have at least a 2-3 week window of time where the students will party their ass off, usually at my expense.

So these first 2 or 3 weeks, I'll spend the majority of my night from 12am to close running to fights and throwing people out. This is because everyone's so amped up to be back, they all go out with their big groups of friends and drink like it's the last time they'll have a chance to touch alcohol. It's true. Eventually the beer muscles come out in force and the nobody-fucks-with-me-or-my-boys mentality emerges. I know this because I've watched it happen for years now. It started last Saturday, and that was only a taste.

The problem with running to these fights when they're called is that unless you've watched the inital fight unfold, you're basically running into a situation unknown. It's running to an emergency with practically a guarantee that you'll be getting physical with someone, except you have no idea what's happening, who's involved, how many are in on it, and how intense it is.

To me, those are some pretty important pieces of information that I usually like to have handy when breaking these sorts of things up. Sadly for us doorguys, we must do without sometimes. Another glorious part of the job.

So when we finally get to these situations, we like to take a moment to wait. To evaluate and scan the fight to see where we would be most useful. This is the smart thing to do. However, if your fellow doorguy is already in the shit, that moment of scan time usually is a luxury that isn't affordable, at least not at the expense of your friend getting hurt.

So we'll dive in, grab somebody, hope we don't get suckerpunched and haul 'em out the door. Go back to the door and check IDs and wait to repeat it again. We'll do that over and over until 2:30am or so and then we'll go home. Continue that for the next 2-3 weeks, and there you have the start of the 2008 Spring Semester.

Welcome back students.

And on a completely unrelated note, the wonderful law which now specifically bans us from drinking at work, which recently went into effect, has been devestating to many of us. I thought all you little fuckers were bad before, but goddamn; you're louder, drunker and more fucking annoying than I ever could have imagined.

So please, for the sake of your painfully sober doorguy/barback/bartender/whatever, please just shut the fuck up and stop screaming in my fucking face. Seriously. No one needs to raise their voice to that decibal level ever in their entire life. Jesus.