Meeting new people is easy, making the first impression is hard. It's even harder when the person initiating that first impression is three sheets to the wind and the subjects of his affections are not. And also "play for the other team."

He never had a shot.

Not yet an hour into my Saturday shift, one of our bartenders called me over and told me I should talk to a guy making several unwanted advances toward women. I walked over, introduced myself and asked if we could talk away from the women.

"I'm not from London!"

"What? No, the women. Do you mind coming with me to talk for a second?"

"I'm not going to London!"

OK, so he's clearly gone and now I need to remove him from the room, but not forcefully.

I ask him to walk with me outside. I think he's obliging when he starts walking toward the door. So I do what any bouncer would early into their shift and give him some space to walk out. Until the man turns around and yells at me.

"QUIT FOLLOWING ME YOU GUMBY-ASS WHORE!"

Clearly a jackass, Pokey tries to throw his drink at me, but I stop it before the arm gets to full extension. I still get semi-soaked with his vodka Red Bull before he storms out whilst calling everyone on the patio very foul names.

Pokey proceeds to cross the street and starts to undo his shorts. Because indecent exposure is somehow the appropriate response to this situation.

At this point in the extreme awkwardness, another man asks what Pokey did to get him kicked out. I told him that we got complaints he was harassing women and he threw a drink at me.

Turns out Pokey has a friend, Prickle, who then slams his drink on the patio furniture and tells me to "clean that up, bitch!" 

Once across the street, Pokey starts full-on choking Prickle from behind to the point of Prickle's knees buckle and he nearly falls to the ground. 

The sun is shining. The air is warm.

It is 8 p.m. on a Saturday. There are six more hours of this shit.

I reached a milestone on the previous night, hitting 150 fakes confiscated. I added five more on Saturday, but only work five more nights in June, so I have to do some work to get to 200 in one year. Possible, but I will be spending a few weeks out of the country soon. People need to be very, very stupid en masse.

Friday Fake No. 1 (146): Bad match. No fighting.

Friday Fake No. 2 (147): Bad Illinois where the line underneath the cardmaker's URL is missing. Automatic fake.

Friday Fake No. 3 (148): Bad Illinois from a guy, which is surprising because women predominantly use fake Illinois IDs in a 4:1 ratio. 

Friday Fake No. 4 (149): Grabbed an ID and didn't bother to remember how to spell the last name. Most people omit a letter, but this girl added about four. Her boyfriend tried to re-enter later that night. claiming his girlfriend was "drunk and retarded." Yeah, because I want people like you throwing that level of affection around my bar at 12:30 a.m. Bye.

Friday Fake No. 5 (150): The $3,000 milestone came on an Ohio fake where the flash comes from one side and not the other. The flag behind the signature is blurry and the ID creases at the slightest bend. 

"This is why nobody comes to the BAR NAME anymore!" she said as she stormed off. 

I drank a nice sweet drink later that night because I needed the sugar to counteract her salty attitude.

Saturday Fake No. 1 (151): Due to certain circumstances I only worked the door on Saturday for roughly 45 minutes. The first of my five IDs tried to enter from a party bus. He didn't even practice using the card. It would've been easier for him to throw $20 at me and run away.

Saturday Fake No. 2 (152): Bad Ohio. No Fighting.

Saturday Fake No. 3 (153): You cannot smile and show teeth in an Indiana ID since 2008. Cannot. State law. I've repeated this several times. So if I see your pearly whites in a Hoosier piece of plastic, I am going to take it.

"Scan it," says a friend of the accused.

"I don't need to."

"But you should scan it. It will scan."

"Listen, I know it's a fake. He knows it's a fake. We all know it's a fake."

"Why are you taking it if you didn't scan it?"

Shut up, that's why.

Saturday Fake No. 4 (154): A new trick I've been using is to ask people how old they are. Asking for a birthdate and how old someone is are two different things. So if your birthday falls after today's date but you say the subtracted number (2017-1993 = 24 in this case), you're going to have a bad time.

Saturday Fake No. 5 (155): If you are 6-foot-3 and ginger with blue eyes don't bring in an ID of someone 5-9 with brown eyes. From Utah.

Utah. The land of Mormons where maybe 65 percent of its citizens don't touch alcohol.

There's no such thing as Mormon Rumspringa. Yet.

Two people have landed punches on me at my current posting. I pulled back from each enough to lessen the damage significantly and have not suffered any bruising. I'm usually shocked these people would try such a thing as I'm a foot taller, with undoubtedly longer reach, than 99.8 percent of our customers. 

Short story even shorter, I was having issues with his girlfriend's ID. She said she had brown eyes but the ID said green. The picture looked spot on and she got all the questions right. The ID looked genuine so I decided there were too many issues (one) for me to feel comfortable letting her enter the bar. Punchy though I was joking. I wasn't. 

Punchy then did the dumb thing and tried to force his way into the gate. He crossed, I gave him a shove and he took a swing and went high. Perhaps he overestimated where my head was for an uppercut? Who knows. But luckily our patio attendees were being uncharacteristically attentive and blocked him on my behalf, stared him down and drove him from the entrance until he turned tail and went off into the night.

Another solid weekend.