Life, it will never be better
23 May 2008 at 4:32 am

So, here's a phrase that was said to me tonight that essentially sums up why I am a bitch most of the time:

"It's not like she could run very fast."

Because I have a broken foot that is in a cast. A broken, encased foot that has worked since noon (it was 1am when the phrase was said loudly enough to invite a response.) A broken, encased, overworked foot that functioned, broken, for two weeks without proper pain pills or protection from the world in which I placed it. I can't run very fast, but I will find a way to destroy you.

I was getting ready to confront another customer who had stiffed me the night before when those glorious words rang in my ears: "It's not as if she could run away;" "It's not like you couldn't catch her; "It's not like she could run very fast." The height of hilarity: hypothetical violence against females. Enter the smackdown.


"I'm sorry?"
Pause.
"What did you just say."
"I didn't mean for you to hear, I'm just drunk and talking loudly."
I turn around, my back to them to close out the credit card of the guy whose ass I was about to chew out who got really, really lucky it was those other guys who were going to be on the receiving end of the Wrath of Ovarian Tumult.
"I was going to get her number until you pissed her off," he said, some 40-something captain of douches with bleach-blonde tips.
I look up at myself into the mirror that gives me a view of the entire bar, including the two douches are about about to be castrated--metaphorically, unfortunately.
"Do you realize that you just threatened me?"
"No, I just--"
"You don't know me. You don't know what I have or haven't been through."
"It was just a joke."
"Fuck you. And fuck you. And fuck you." I smile my "By the way, I'm on the clock, asshole" smile.

I hand the boy who tipped me nada on a $20 tab the night before his credit card slip, along with a copy of his receipt from the night before. "Just so you know," I say with the most friendly smile you could ever imagine, the Applebee's smile, I call it: "Bartenders remember who tip and who doesn't." He stumbles over himself: "I, oh, did I forget my card? No, I remember, I tipped cash each round." "Okay!" I chirp, my eyes lighting up the way I know they do. "My mistake." I give him a Crest smile, tilting my head to the right, chin slightly jutted forward, just to let him know that I am WORKING AT MY JOB, that the behavior he is receiving is MY PERSONA, not a reflection of my personality. That the scene he just witnessed was tame compared to what it would have been had I not been responsible for the place of business that encompasses someone else's livelihood. This isn't me; this is the bartender, getting her just due.

He tips me $1.50 on a $18.50 tab. I'll never see him again; that's the point.

I weed them out. I have my regulars, the people who make me light up when the walk into the bar. And it's not because they tip me $15 a round, because they don't, always. They are the people who get off work at their bar or restaurant and are genuinely happy to walk into a place that's playing whatever music I'm playing, with a bartender who will drop whichever douche she's currently attempting to help with a giant smile, who will reference whatever they had mentioned was going on in their lives the last time we spoke, and I'll get them their drinks, and they will express gratitude, and they will tip accordingly.

Needless to say, the douches tipped me $20 on two PBRs. Needless to say, I burst into tears as soon as the last customer was out the door. Needless to say, I called my brother so that he could remind me that not every male experiences a female from a predatory perspective. Needless to say, he didn't pick up.

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About me
Hi. Morgan, 27, of Santa Barbara, CA. I am a hypocritical admirer of rhetoric (when it is my own) and an observer of literary trends. A secret: I don't take anything very seriously, and that includes myself.