Squad Up
I yelled at a 53-year-old woman on Saturday night. She deserved it.
I'm going a little Quentin Tarantino out-of-order in this week's Canecdote because I am not a yeller, and although this story has nothing to do with the title, it was very exciting and raised some internal questions I've been asking about my job role.
A drop of rainwater leaves little impact. dozens can give pause to a group of bar-hoppers to walk a few blocks in a sprinkle. Hundreds will make them cover their hair with their coats. Thousands and they huddle inside awaiting Uber or Lyft pickups. Millions and the city floods. A bar acts in much the same way. One customer is a lonely sight. A dozen is a nice group. A hundred and we're half full, and any more than our capacity and we flood into a line outside.
Rain or shine, my bar floods with humanity every Friday and Saturday night. As the thousands of drops hit the prospective customers on Saturday night a 53-year-old woman walks up, umbrella unfurled in hand with her son behind her. I ask her for her son's ID and it's fake. The red bordered Illinois ID above. The picture is copy-and-pasted and a simple bend test revealed three separate creases in the middle.
Mom wasn't happy. With me. How audacious that I took her son's ID. I was struck with a cavalcade of questions. "Why did you take it?" "Where's your manager?" "I'm here to celebrate my daughter's 21st birthday so why won't you let me in?"
It was fake. We take fakes.
He doesn't need to be involved.
You broke the rules. No entry.
The daughter now enters the picture, full of shot-fueled vim and vigor, about to take on the whole world, one bouncer at a time. Silly girl.
Mom asks for the ID back. I say no. Mom demands and starts yelling at me to get my manager, which I know won't happen. The kid says nothing. I never heard him speak a word.
The daughter then gets right up in my face, or rather, my lower ribcage, and starts pointing her index finger at her mother and trying to pull her into the bar.
She tried one last attempt.
"I am his mother. I am 53-years old and he wouldn't bring a bad ID to a bar.
"Well, you should have raised him better."
Whatever one level above mic drop is, that's what happened. I stopped caring, the daughter flipped me off and tried to stammer back into the bar. I told the other bouncer to get her and the whole party was kicked out. The girl. The mom. The son. The nine other party guests.
She brought the wrong squad.
Is a bouncer a customer service representative? A woman walked up to me on Saturday night and told me I should work on my customer service because she was inconvenienced that I spent a few seconds looking at her ID because she was over 21 and didn't deserve to be treated like that. In the rain, no less. I would like to take this time to apologize to that woman.
For not yelling at her mom, too.
I am sorry I took a few seconds out of your life to question your age. Sometimes younger people lie. And sometimes older people lie to cover up for the younger ones. I've expressed how much I don't like people lying to me. Young, old, race, sex, creed, it doesn't matter what act you try to pull, if it's in front of me and your purpose for lying is to drink in my bar illegally, we're going to have some problems. I yelled at a 53-year-old mother of two on Saturday night in the pouring rain and I was happy to do it.
I may not have the best bedside manner when it comes to dealing with patrons, but 114 people have tried to pass off 116 fake IDs. Two tried to use the same fake twice.
The penalty for the bar is a shutdown for the night, a fine and possible permanent career loss for one or all bartenders.
You can be inconvenienced for 10 seconds.
I will post OPSEC soon. It details fakes 110-113 and 115-116. Crossing the century mark seems like such a long time ago.
