I should have known what I was getting into at the 2 street bar on the day I first walked into the place. It was packed with 2 street blue collar tough guys on pay day and when I walked in I felt like a record stopped. Literally every eye followed me as I walked around the big horseshoe bar to where the manager was standing. "One of these things is not like the others." I thought to myself. The manager eagerly greeted me and told me that I needed to "interview" with the owner upstairs. He pointed to a little rickety spiral staircase almost blocking the mens room door that led into a hole in the ceiling.
I started circling my way up the staircase. It was so tight that it was more like a ladder. The second floor was well neglected. Piles of old beer brand lights, dusty dart boards and boxes of pint glasses were stacked on top of the ratty worn out carpet. The room was dark, barely lit by an exposed bulb hanging from the dropped ceiling that couldn't have been more than 15 watts. At first I thought they were playing a joke on the new guy but then I heard the sounds of a ball game coming from down a small first unnoticed tight squeeze hall. I made my way towards the sound which led to a door and my polite knock. When I was instructed to enter I found the owner sitting behind a huge ornately carved hard wood desk and sitting in what looked more like a throne than an office chair. The source of the game was a huge plasma screen t.v. For the life of me, I still can't figure out how he was able to get that stuff up into the room. He had a big Irishman's head of silver hair and the rutty red face to go with it. He was chomping a huge stinking cigar that polluted the room with so much smoke my eyes burned. He was counting out money from the huge wad in his hands to the multiple towers of cash stacked all over his desk. "Which fucking movie did I just walk into?" I thought to myself.
"So I hear you're a good bartender" he said with a slight mumble from the cigar rolling around in his mouth.
"I would like to think so" I said.
"Good. Just don't steal from me. I hate it when they steal from me" he said without looking up from his money.
And my interview was over. I went back down to get shown around and "train".
Now every bar owner is a drunk, and they always have their preferred poison. This owner was no exception and his was Stoli and soda. More Stoli, less soda. As I was being shown around, he stumbled down to the bar and while he slurped down his refill he slurred out his exiting instructions.
"Buy him a drink. Buy him a drink and him. Don't by her a drink she's a bitch" and then he left.
A few minutes later the manager laughed. "Oh he'll shit himself when he realizes he forgot this" and he picked up a leather briefcase.
"Why, what's in it?" I asked.
He bobbed the briefcase up and down by the handle, balanced on his fingertips like he was trying to guess it's weight.
"Oh I'd say... around 40 thousand dollars."
His cell phone started to ring.
"See, I told you" he giggled and then he answered the phone.
I turned to the hard bodied puerto rican hottie day shift bartender and asked "isn't he worried about carrying around that much money?"
"No, it's not a problem for him" she answered. "Oh but there was that one time..."
Seems there was a week where the owner got word that he should be worried and bought a 9-mm for himself. But after a couple of days, he remembered the briefcase and forgot the gun. One of the bartenders was fighting with his girlfriend and borrowed the pistol to shoot up her SUV.
"Now he won't let any of us bring guns to work" she said with a sigh.
"That's right" the manager interjected, closing his cell phone. "Staff can't bring guns to work anymore."
"This is a pretty rough bar isn't it?" I asked him.
"Oh no, don't worry" he reassured me. "You'll get used to it."
And I never did.
About 4 months later I was shuffling a drunk outside to dump by the trash. (my favorite place to put them.) In the McDonald's parking lot across the street was the owner. He was bloated with Stoli, weaving back and forth with his cigar in his mouth, 40 thousand dollars in one hand and his dick in the other- pissing all over his own BMW. I was comforted knowing he didn't feel the need to carry a gun.
My Company
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