Every asshole has his day

Over the holiday I've been feeling rather neck deep in assholes...
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Oh, don't mind me. I'm just waiting for you to finish chuckling at the VERY clever gay porn joke you just told yourself. Everyone ready to move on? Excellent.

Asshats  and douchenozzles of every possible background and persuasion (the average range in background being Pasty to "Look at that fucking cracker", while the persuasion category  ran Fundamentalist to Pentecostal) took the Labor Day weekend here in NYC, turned a critical eye on their beloved Bennigans, Applebees and TGI Fridays and said in a mutual voice quite brimming with resolve, "Time for something new".
They should be commended for that. I myself can't even even string two syllables together when my voice is brimming with

And so these brave, brave Americans trundled themselves into their Tastefully Economic Family Transports (TEFTs) and made their way to the big city to celebrate Labor Day the way god intended: by pestering the lower class who actually have to work on major holidays. Yes from Long Island to New Jersey, Staten Island to Yonkers the great Burbgolian Horde TEFTed their way to pay homage to  we, the low of class, and our commitment to helping them have it their way.
Or at least that's how I would imagine it played out in their bubblewrapped heads. It was probably something closer to them reading the weekly culture section in the times and feeling that a little dash of big city life was just what was needed to spice up their tuna noodle casserole of a 3 day weekend. Now don't get me wrong, I am a huge proponent of city life. Especially THIS city life. Sure it's full of deranged whackjobs and muggings and Yorkie-eating sewer rats, but it also has museums and parks and nightlife that rival anything else you could find anywhere else on the planet

OK, so we're a little short on rain forests in New York.

I would openly invite any one in the world to come kick it with me in Brooklyn for a day provided they remember to pack an open mind.
Which brings us right back to the nightmare that was this past weekend. Every goddamn visitor to my fair city this weekend came with the notion that paying $15 for a cheeseburger and $6 for a Bud Light Lime was the pinnacle of what NYC had to offer. And they were damn sure of it too. I am a bartender by trade, so my exposure to this herd of blandaholics is semi-limited in that while we are a rather nice looking craft beer bar, we don't provide that same, safe, family oriented drinking experience as Bennigans or Wingers. This does not, however, mean that my bar is any kind of refuge from Hurricane Meh. All day and night, I was besieged by men clad in the forever chic polo shirt/cargo shorts/dress socks ensemble who wanted nothing more than beer that tasted like seltzer. My supply of Buckler evaporated, my Stella taps gave up the ghost and when the Jager ran out, I had to employ a cattle prod to regain order.
When confronted about my overall lack of inoffensive quaffables, all I could do was hold up my hands and say "We were hoping you were not not anticipating you all coming to visit us."
And naturally they would then go on to assume that I was in fact the  person who made the egregious error of not getting my hands on all the near-beer I could find in anticipation of their foretold coming. In fact, I was given so many pieces of various and sundry minds that I was later able to reconstruct an entire mind from scratch, which promptly belched, ordered a round of MGD 64 and demanded I put on a UFC match. I was forced to euthanize it with a claw hammer.

Then there were the women, or as the polo shirt set referred to them, "Laideeeeees". They had to be rapidly disabused of the notion that every bar in the world maintains a comprehensive wine list and that every bartender clutters their head up the recipe of every layered shot known to man. My saving grace was that we as a bar do not regularly carry mint, otherwise I'm sure I would have been the head-to-toe sugar coated nightmare that is The Post-Mojito Rush Bartender. The sound of mint being muddled with ice and simple syrup is like blood in the fucking water. If you should ever find yourself confronted with more than 5 simultaneous mojito orders, be prepared to do nothing but make the fucking things for the rest of the evening. Life, as you know it, is over.

Gaze into the Abyss.

One of the most beautiful things I have ever seen was a particularly beleaguered bartender who, when confronted with a mojito order that was somewhere north of 8, locked eyes with the customer and told her that he was out of mint. She looked at his garnish station, pointed at the large amount of mint sitting in an insert and asked "Then what's that?" Without losing eye contact, the bartender picked up the insert, dumped the contents on the floor and maintained "We. Are. Out. Of. Mint."

So she ordered caipirinhas.

The Abyss gazes back.

Labor Day is special because not only to we get the usual tourists, both international and domestic, but those lovable scamps, The Students, are back! Oh sweet Jesus where do I even begin with this? The Student presence gave my job that little extra kick in the balls that says "You're not fucked. There. NOW you're fucked." Just keeping track of which zitty little faces I had already carded was a full time job unto itself. They like to arrive in intimate groups of 30 or so and stand at the bar talking to each other for the first 15 minutes, which is the bar equivalent of a full naval blockade. Then come the questions, oh dear god, the QUESTIONS!
What does that taste like? Which beer has the most alcohol? What's your cheapest drink? Are you hiring? Can my underage friend come in if they don't drink anything? Do you think my friend is cute? Half an hour later, you have served 5 of the 30, your regulars have fled in terror and you have netted approximately $2.17 in tips. I would almost rather make mojitos all night.

While I would certainly hate to live in a world made up of people who think exactly like me, as a wise man once said, this aggression will not stand, man. By Monday, I was a hair-trigger attitude problem with lasers for eyes and poison darts for nipples. The shear amount of savage violence that I wished upon my customers would have made Spanish Inquisitors soak their shorts. And yet? The worst verbal bashing I doled out was to a group of Frenchmen (natch) who wanted me to bring their order to their table. All I could muster was a flustered, "I'm not a fucking barmaid", to which they hushedly replied "Zut alors!" (means "clear the poop deck" in Welsh or something).
I know full well that I have no one to blame for the industry with which I have saddled myself, but myself. Also I should be grateful that, despite putting on my best impression of an Easter Island stone head this weekend, I was tipped out better than expected and committed no crimes of passion. But for fuck's sake, if anyone is reading this from the comfort of a booth at Bennigans (BTW my spellchecker keeps insisting I want to spell "benign" which, in my own way, I am) please take note. If all you really want is the same exact damn things you are used to getting back home, then I offer the following as a substitute to the hours of TEFTing it will take you to come to the city: pull up the Google street view for Times Square while eating a hot dog of indeterminate origin while sitting next to an open sewer. It's almost like the real thing, but easier on us all.