Valentine's Day

I had to work on Valentine's day this year and when I arrived at the bar, the place was packed. The parking lot was full of cars and trucks gleaming in the afternoon sun, a welcome addition to the day. I entered through the back and peeked my head into the bar from the back room. The place was full, each booth filled with two or more people, tables pushed together to accommodate a group of twelve, and the bar stools almost completely filled.

There were three coworkers on the floor and so I didn't feel the need to clock on early (there are normally only two). I ordered myself a sandwich. I needed to eat. My shift was starting at 4 in the afternoon and I knew I wouldn't be done until around 2 in the morning. I needed fuel. As I stood at the computer, trying to figure out what I wanted to eat, a regular poked his head through the pass through window from the video poker room.

"Looks like you guys are short-handed today."

Urgh, this guy is a known ball-buster. Demanding, temperamental, and, worst of all for us bartenders, cheap.

"No," I said in a soft voice, "there are three of them on. It's just busy. You'll have to wait."

I knew what he wanted from me. I knew he wanted me to get him a new beer although I wasn't on the clock. I didn't do it. I tucked my book under my arm, sent me order to the kitchen, turned and walked away from him, smiling.

After I had eaten, tied on my apron, clocked on and moved out onto the floor, I discovered that things had slowly deteriorated since I ordered my food. The place was still full and there were glasses, plates, silverware, and tabs spread out all over behind the bar. The place was a wreck. The straws were almost empty. Only a few limp pieces of lemon lie in the fruit tray, and the cooks looked like they were about to pull their hair out.

This isn't the way you want to start a shift.

I jumped right in and began cleaning. I didn't leave the back of the bar. I trusted in my coworkers to make sure that the guests were satisfied and I set about the business of getting set up for the dinner rush and cleaning up the mess from this unusual afternoon pop in business.

Every time I turned around to grab something new, there were people from the poker room waving tickets at me. They wanted their money, they didn't want to wait. They were impatient, pushy, more than one was drunk. I ignored their drink orders, or pretended to forget, in order to slow down their consumption. I didn't want to cut people off at 4:30 in the afternoon but it looked like we were heading that way.

We ran out of large bills to pay the poker crowd. I was paying them in bundles of fives. We ran out of Jaegermeister. Two kegs popped in the first hour and I had to change them. Waitresses were getting food orders messed up. I was only a half an hour into the shift and things were already looking gloomy.

Happy Valentine's Day. Get to work.