Customer: “Give me a martini and make it dirty!”

I make the customer her drink and hand it to her. She doesn’t even touch it.

Customer: “I said to make it dirty!”

Me: “That is dirty, ma’am.”

Customer: “But I can still see straight through it.”

Me: “Dirty means we add some olive brine to the drink, ma’am.”

Customer: “Oh.”

Me: “What did you think a dirty martini meant?”

Customer: “I don’t know, I just always see them order them in movies.”

She took a sip. She did not like it. She ordered a rum and coke instead.

In Norway, we have something called the “russ celebration”. It’s to celebrate when we graduate high school and is generally just a bunch of young adults partying and behaving wildly.

While the celebrations have escalated wildly over the last couple of decades, costing enormous sums of money for decorated vehicles, stereo sets, and going to festivals, one of the longest-running traditions is that the “russ” have to participate in our Seventeenth of May parade; that’s our Constitution Day. That also means that, traditionally, the night before is the biggest party night. For our American readers, this whole thing kind of becomes like spring break and the Fourth of July all rolled up in one.

When I was a “russ”, I wasn’t drinking much; I was one of the people organizing the parties rather than getting hammered all the time. (The legal drinking age in Norway is eighteen.) Some of the guys teased me a bit over this, but I felt like I didn’t really need to be on the sauce all the time. Therefore, while we partied all through the night on the sixteenth of May, I stayed relatively sober while my classmates got drunker and drunker. At this point, some of them really started teasing, saying ironically how much of a shame it was that I had to organize things and leave the drinking to them.

On the morning of the seventeenth, just before the big parade was due to start, most of the guys were hungover, probably still drunk. Then, it occurred to them that in order to drive their special vehicles in the parade, they’d have to be sober!

Suddenly, the light drinker was very much sought-after as I could fulfil the role of stand-in designated driver.

I work in an ambulance. I pick up an underage drunk teen. He’s misbehaving and making a mess of my ambulance.

Me: “Knock it off, kid.”

Teen: “I can say whatever I want and do whatever I want. My dad is the police chief, and he can have you fired!”

Me: “Okay, then let’s call your dad and tell him that his underage son was caught with a fake ID, was drunk as h***, pissed all over the inside of my ambulance, and then spit a snot ball at me.”

We took his drunk a** to the hospital and let them call his dad.

I work in a grocery store as a cashier. It’s around 9:00 pm when a woman comes through my lane.

Customer: “Can I get some vodka?”

Me: “Sure. Do you want it from behind the counter or from the liquor aisle?”

Customer: “The aisle.”

Our store closes the gates on the liquor aisle when the desk person goes home, so an employee has to open it. I tell her to come with me so she can pick it herself since I’m not old enough to drink and don’t know much about alcohol. On the way there, I notice that her balance is a bit off, but I just think she has a medical condition.

Me: “Okay, which one do you want?”

Customer: “Whatever is cheapest.”

I start looking for the cheapest when my coworker comes up to me and whispers in my ear.

Coworker: “She has come in before and tried to get alcohol, but she didn’t have any money, left, and didn’t come back.”

I mull this over while I am still looking for the cheapest vodka. I find it, but we only have one.

Me: “It looks like we only have one of the cheapest.”

Customer: “I need two.”

Me: “I could grab the next cheapest or a bigger size?”

Customer: “Just grab me the next cheapest.”

I start looking for the next cheapest. She is leaning on the card display, and my coworker is still there but off the clock. My manager comes over.

Manager: “I will not be selling to you. You clearly have had too much tonight.”

Customer: “I’m fine. Just sell me the vodka.”

Manager: “You ran into me on your way over here, and you can barely stand.”

Customer: “I’m fine.”

Manager: “I don’t think so.

Since my manager said she is refusing the sale, I put the vodka back and close the gate. I go back to my register to check out the people who were waiting.

Customer: “I’ll just get my driver to come in and buy it for me.”

Manager: “I don’t think so. I’m not comfortable selling alcohol to you.”

Customer: “Fine.”

I’m assuming she had a friend drive her here, but no, she meant her [Rideshare] driver. We have a lotto machine and a fridge up front for pick-up orders, and they have about a two- or three-foot gap in between them. The woman is walking very slowly toward the front, using her hand to steady herself. She gets to the gap and falls into it.

Manager: “Are you okay?”

Customer: “Yeah.”

My manager helps her out of the gap, but the woman stays on the floor for a minute before getting up. My manager helps her outside to her [Rideshare] driver.

Me: “Wow.”

Next Customer: “I know.”

In my defence, I have never seen a drunk person before except on TV. If I had known she was drunk, I would have called my manager up sooner and maybe we could have avoided some of this.

I’m at a restaurant and bar where I am a regular. A customer is in there with his two small kids. He’s wearing his server out with requests, getting mad about his kids’ food, and all sorts of crap. He has had about eight or nine beers, along with a couple of shots.

He moans when the server brings the check.

Customer: “I didn’t drink that much, you b****!”

His check was about $80. He did eventually pay, but he left no tip. This was all I needed to see.

I followed him outside, got his car description and tag number, and then called to report him for possible drunk driving. I left my contact details in case they needed to follow up with me.

They did follow up! It turned out there was an officer on patrol just around the corner. They pulled him over before he got two blocks away.