The Rules of Booze

In the service business, there are guidelines. Not only are there rules you have to follow within the restaurant organization, but there are often laws which dictate how you are to do your job that are regulated by some level of government. Exactly how you have to navigate these rules varies when you’re confronted with restaurant guests who are not only ignorant, but irate becomes tricky.

First exhibit; An unruly old bag.



The woman of about sixty approached the bar from one of the tables in the restaurant, and in what was later determined to be her most polite tone of voice, demanded four glasses of champagne for her table. The problem? Everyone at her table had just received beverages, and they hadn’t been touched. The state law where this restaurant is located strictly prohibits having more than one alcoholic beverage at a time on the table.

Her response?



Of course she hasn’t heard of that law. So by no means is she obligated to follow it.

The woman kept crooning over and over to the bartender about how someone at the table recently got engaged, and that it was absolutely ridiculous that she couldn’t have the champagne. The reason she left the table and went up to the bar was because her server told her the same thing the bartender had just finished telling her. Instead of embracing this new knowledge (that was reaffirmed by two separate people nonetheless), she continued being irate.

If you've "never heard of a law," it doesn't make you exempt from obeying it. Just because you're celebrating, it doesn't give you a free pass to demand that a server risk his or her job to placate you. If an officer stops you in your car for running a stop sign, it wouldn't quite pan out in the field to say that you've "never heard of any law" that says you have to stop at a stop sign. You'd get a ticket.

The bartender walked away and proceeded to take care of his other patrons, because those were the ones who were paying him, and as an added bonus, not ridiculing him.

She shouted for him again.



So the bartender did what any level-headed server would do. He approached her again and greeted her as if they had never spoken.

Eventually, after complaining loudly and apparently ruining someone's engagement party, she returned to her table. The cranky bitch was approached by a manager, which is the next step in the issue-resolving process. Instead of four glasses, the manager suggested that he could bring over a bottle when they were finished with their current beverages (running the total number of people reaffirming the existence of this law to 3).

Her response?



....my God.

"Just give us the fucking champagne."

The fact that this woman sunk so low as to not only demand her needs be met, but to order someone to violate a state law, and then swear at someone who was trying to help her makes her in a class of her own. The type of evil bitch this person is deserves to be locked away in the deepest pit of special Hell to be tormented for all eternity. On a celebratory occasion like an engagement, you ruin everything when you get carried away forgetting that you are not the center of the celebration.

The rules and guidelines of the restaurant business as well as of the state and country leave you few options for dealing with scum like this. You simply have to placate them as they continue to scream, cry, and throw fits like infants until they get their way. Any retributive action on your part, such as telling her to "shut her pie hole," flipping over her table, or using violence to teach her a lesson would get you arrested, or more likely, even fired.

There must be something we can do. For those reading this? Don't be that lady.

The High-Horse Regular

In any restaurant, there are "Regulars." These are the people who come in semi-frequently, order the same thing, tip the same way, and who are either easy to take care of, or utterly impossible to deal with.

In the latter category, you have the basic type of person who wants to sit in the exact same seat every time, order the same thing with over six thousand guidelines for how to prepare it, and often won't tip generously, but assume that he or she is doing everyone a huge favor by coming back over and over again.

When something doesn't go right, they tend to become irate;



One of the bartenders I know had a great story for me about one of these crotchety old attention magnets. He sat down at his usual seat at the bar, and instantly began making demands;



Instead of conceding to the regular's demands, the bartender responded with care and concern for all of the bar's patrons. It went well.



As expected, the old fart didn't pay any mind to the offer the bartender made for another spot at the bar that had a television for his own personal viewing. He expected that he didn't have to move from his seat, and wanted the other people at the bar who were watching world cup soccer to lay down dead for him and his baseball game.

Now I agree that soccer is gratuitously boring. But I disagree wholeheartedly with anyone who comes into an establishment and demands that he get his way (no matter how unpopular) just because he's been there a few more times than the others. I will say one thing for soccer, though; it has the rowdiest fans in the world. I would have loved to have seen what would have happened if the bartender had changed the TV to the baseball game this guy demanded. The soccer guys probably would have kicked that prick's wrinkly old ass inside out.

Seemingly in an effort to convince the bartender that an extra ten minutes of equivocally boring baseball was worth an eternity of shouldering the identity of "complete fucking douche-bag," the regular demanded a pen and paper to begin mathematical calculations of his tips for the past year.



If he were trying to assert that he comes in enough to place a monetary value on his time there, it would mean that if the two soccer fans had tipped $201 dollars on their meal (not so unreasonable--people have left tips of this magnitude before), it would mean that they should now have a say over what everyone else at the bar watches.

If those two soccer fans were regulars themselves, the regular probably would not have had his way either because it would have devolved into a pissing battle between the opposing customers. There would be no civil way to determine who was more 'regular' than the other.

The only fair and sane way to determine who gets the TV is to simply allow those who arrived first to control what goes on. When they leave, someone else can request something to watch. Speaking of what to watch, the regular changed the channel after the soccer-viewers left just in time to find that there WAS NO BASEBALL GAME. It wasn't even on that evening.

Just goes to show you that just because you're a regular doesn't mean people there are forced to respect you, and it CERTAINLY doesn't mean that the people there LIKE you. Bear that in mind if you frequent a place you really enjoy going to.