I’m a bartender, and a customer comes up to me with a picture of a drink from another place.

Customer: “Can you make it?”

Me: “Uh… no. I have no idea what’s in that.”

Customer: “Oh, it was with gin… I think!”

Me: “Great, here’s a gin and tonic; have fun.”

I played music for a living for nearly twenty years and always played New Year’s Eve. Fellow musicians and I call it “Amateur Night” because that’s when people who never drink, drink to excess.

If you frequent a local bar often, you’ll notice the regulars who are almost always there tend to leave around 7 PM or 8 PM on New Year’s Eve, because people who can’t handle their alcohol will be getting drunk soon. It’s always a madhouse, with people barfing in the bathrooms and just being idiots.

On Dec. 31, 1999, the band I was in had just finished our second set and was outside to catch a smoke and some fresh air before seeing in the year 2000, when a very drunk young woman came up to me.

Woman: *Yelling.* “You have to get me back in the bar; the bartender threw me out!”

Me: “There’s no way that’s happening because you’re banned.”

And just like that, she proceeded to take a huge bite out of my arm!

Now I’m a peaceful man who, to protect myself, flung this woman to the ground and went back inside.

An hour later, a policeman came in and stopped our set saying they were arresting me. They took me outside and there was the crazy drunk standing next to the police car and smiling. She showed them bruises on her arm and face where I flung her to the ground and she was filing charges for assault.

I showed the cop her bite mark and had my bandmates as witnesses that I acted in self-defense. The bartender also, stated that she was thrown out for being unruly. She stood there bewildered as to why she was being handcuffed and started crying as they put her in the car.

We went in and finished the show and that was the last New Year’s Eve I ever booked.

Back when I was in university, I had a friend who was also my housemate. When we started, he was a nice, down-to-earth guy, but over time, he slowly became more and more conceited and arrogant. He had some better-than-average luck with women and, slowly, he had become convinced that every single woman on the planet wanted to sleep with him. He was also stuck in a depressing on/off relationship with his now ex-girlfriend, which was rife with cheating on both sides. Currently, they were in an “on” period together.

Every time [Friend #1] would go out, he would seem to return with some incredible tale of how he was going about his daily business when some attractive girl started hitting on him. At first, we were massively jealous and couldn’t believe he had this kind of luck. Slowly, though, we began to become skeptical; while he was decent-looking, he wasn’t exactly a male model! 

One night, we were at our student union bar on a very slow Sunday night. [Friend #1], two other housemates, and I were sitting at a table drinking and chatting with each other. Across from us was a table with three girls who were deeply involved in their own conversation. The entire time, none of us spoke a single word to them. At one point, one of the girls stood up and adjusted her jeans slightly. None of us thought anything of it… except [Friend #1]!

As we were walking out, suddenly, [Friend #1] came out with this.

Friend #1: “Oh, my God! Those girls were totally checking me out!”

All of us shot him a “WTF” expression as literally zero words or looks were exchanged!

Me: “Err… mate, they didn’t say a single word to us.”

Friend #2: “Yeah, man, they were mostly talking with each other.”

Friend #1: “Are you f****** blind? That one girl was totally giving me signals! Man, she wanted me bad!”

Friend #3: “Okay… What did she do, exactly?”

Friend #1: “Didn’t you see? She got up and adjusted her jeans!”

We all gave him blank and confused looks.

Me: “Okay… So what?”

Friend #1: “DURRR! That meant she wanted to f*** me!”

His logic was so bizarre and nonsensical that I had to do a double-take! 

Me: “I think she just adjusted her jeans, dude! That was it!”

Friend #1: *Snorts* “Yeah, well, that’s why you’re still a virgin and I’m not! You don’t get women, which is why they don’t fancy you! Man, if I wasn’t with [Ex-Girlfriend], I’d be all over that lot!”

With that, he strutted off, thinking he was hot stuff.

After that, we began to realize that [Friend #1]’s apparent luck was more likely massively embellished — especially after one day when [Friend #2] came up to me laughing himself silly.

Friend #2: “You won’t believe this!”

Me: “What’s up?”

Friend #2: “[Friend #1] just went to the supermarket, and he’s convinced the girl at the checkout wants to sleep with him!”

Me: “Oh, God. What did she say?”

Friend #2: “She smiled and said, ‘Hello,’ and, ‘How’s your day going so far?’”

Me: “He does realize that’s literally customer service speech, right?”

Friend #2: “Nope. That’s further evidence that he’s what the opposite sex wants!”

I’ve never met a person who became so deluded about his own ability with women.

Fifteen years later, he’s still very much single, while all the rest of us are married with children! Seems his skills weren’t so potent after all…

I work in a restaurant and bar. Some angry customers stop to yell at me as they’re leaving.

Customers: “We have to go to the emergency room because of a shellfish allergy! Why didn’t you tell us the crab artichoke dip had crab in it?!”

That’s the same dip they ordered by saying the full name.

Sometimes, I wonder about people.

Many, many years ago, I worked half a shift at a bar in northern Wisconsin before I found out it was a local meeting spot for the scariest group of extreme racists that may or may not have been part of a three-letter hate group.

They’d take over half the seats in the house, get loudly drunk, and then wander off in all directions. The place looked respectable on the outside, so I never expected it to be such a nightmare.

On my first day, I arrived shortly after most of them were already a few drinks in.

One of them staggered over to the bar.

Me: “Hello! What can I pour for you?”

Racist: “We’ll see, but firsht, ya gotta answer me a queshion.”

From the way he was slurring, I was already wondering if my first task on my first shift would be to cut off a belligerent drunk and convince them to drink some water or eat some food.

Me: “Well, I’m new, but I can probably tell you what’s in just about any drink we serve.”

Racist: “Naw, naw, thassss…”

The word ended in a hiss, and he slowly tilted to the left before righting himself.

Racist: “…not what I wanna ashk. I just wanna know…” 

At this point, he went from slurring in a conversational tone to bellowing at the top of his lungs.

Racist: “AIN’T YEW GLAD YEW AIN’T A [N-WORD]?!”

And in that instant, half the bar swiveled their heads, and they all stared straight at me, waiting for my answer.

Until that moment, I’d only ever heard of people saying their insides went cold, but I would’ve sworn I’d just swallowed an entire bucket of ice. With red flags waving and klaxons screaming inside my head, I put on my most agreeable expression and nodded to him. Then, I politely excused myself, told my boss that I was out, and left. My boss just shrugged and said maybe I wasn’t a good fit.

In the decades since, I have never encountered a workplace like that, and I hope I never will again.