Back in the Trenches

Friday night. Laura's curse holds out. (Her second one that is). I walk in at six to find nearly every table full and Laura dashing madly about. It's a good half hour before I get a table of my own, and it holds pretty quiet for the remainder of the night, with a little rush around midnight when the wedding gets out.

The bar promptly clears out around seven, and Laura and I sit around twiddling our thumbs. About now a couple walks in. Laura leans over to me, "Can you take them, I don't get along with the chick." I say I can, but it ends up being a moot point as they walk up to the bar and stand exactly in the server section. Awesome.

The guy looks kinda familiar, I think, "Is it?" Sure enough, it's a guy who was a bartender for a while when I first started at the bar. You'd think if anyone would know better than to stand in the server station, it'd be a bartender. Especially a bartender who worked at this exact bar. Yeesh.

Two ladies come in and sit by the ATM. They're the indecisive type. Yay.
Gal 1: Are those games over there for playing with?
Me: Nope, they're purely decorative. Yeah, help yourselves.
They quickly prove to be pains in my rear. After dropping off their drinks, I ask if there's anything else I can get them. They say no, so I leave them be. A while later, I see one looking at the app. menu while standing away from the table. She puts it down and head for the bathroom. I decide that when she gets back I'll head over and ask if they'd like an appetizer, so I have a seat at the end of the bar to wait for the potty break. Moments later, the non-peeing gal walks over to the bar to ask Julia about ordering, so I head over to ask, sweetly, what I could do for her. Obviously, there is a lack of understanding (patience) here.

After a few games of Scrabble (during which I provide a Scrabble Dictionary from behind the bar) they're done. They want no more drinks, and when I ask how they're doing, they say fine and wave me off. I check on them maybe three times, each time they want nothing. Now, maybe the second time I checked on them, most customers who're done drinking would ask for the check. Not these two. No, they preferred to wait until I was otherwise occupied to, once again, go up to the bar. Again, I had to head them off and ask, once again sweetly, what I could do for 'em. Now they're ready for the check.

I drop it off. When I wander back that way to pick a song on the jukebox/see if they're ready for change, I overhear, "If we leave 10% that's $2." Lovely. (Reminder, folks, servers have keen hearing and are paying more attention to you than you think.) I head back to the bar and tell Laura what I overheard. She makes an appropriately snarky remark and we watch the table.
Laura: Think they'll leave you two bucks?
Me: I dunno, but I'd bet you money that they won't put the Scrabble game away.
They pack it back into the box and leave. The problem with having board games - most people don't have the courtesy to put them back from where they got them. These ladies are no exception. Though, they did leave me 15% (three dollar bills, a quarter, and a dime). Since I give change only in quarters, anyone who leaves me a coin smaller than a quarter baffles me. Seriously, a dime?

Around midnight-ish, the wedding reception across the street lets out, and a small crowd of people who don't feel like they've had enough alcohol yet wanders over. I count no fewer than three bridesmaids in the group, all in green strapless dresses which are actually quite pretty. They're mostly a non-issue, save that they stand around in the way. One guy who is, in particular, inconveniently positioned, also seems to be made out of elbows. Someone who stands like that, taking up as much space as humanly possible, is saying something. Usually, if it's me, I'm saying "get out of the server station, dumbass." I'm not sure what statement he was trying to make, but I had to keep nudging him out of my way.

In other news, Friday was one of those everybody-I-know nights. This time with a distinctly school theme. No fewer than five people who're students at the university came through within a few hours of each other. I could have done without two of them - but luckily they came in when Laura was still working so I passed them off to her.

While I was at the bar, my folks stopped by the house to give Sherman attention for a couple hours and let her in for the night. Since the dog and I went on a long walk Friday afternoon, she was pretty much down for the count for most of my parents' visit and though I was a bit concerned about her being in the house (locked in my room) for a few unsupervised hours, she did just fine. Sleeping dogs can't get into too much trouble.