I just love working in the hospitality industry. I challenge you to think of any other profession in which you can be called a cocksucker for merely doing your job. Ok, you’re right, a prostitute might get called that but I’m talking about homophobic terms of abuse not job descriptions.

You see, part of working in a bar is that you have to inform the occasional patron that they are displaying the common signs of intoxication and that any further attempts to purchase alcohol will be politely rebuked. As you can imagine, telling drunken idiots – 95% of which are male – that they have had enough is not a particularly enjoyable task. Sure, you can employ the usual tricks – by using ‘I’ statements you can put the focus on yourself rather than the behaviour of the drooling neanderthal on the other side of the bar – but even “I can lose my job if I keep serving you” doesn’t register with most of the people that we cut off and more often than not abusive language and threats of violence ensue.

So it was last Saturday night when I had the unenviable task of informing one delightful gentleman that the drink I was pouring him would have to be his last for the evening. Needless to say he wasn’t too impressed and despite my best attempts to explain my obligations as a holder of a Responsible Service of Alcohol certificate, I soon became aquainted with a dose of vitriol.

Look, I get it. You’re a big man and you won’t have any young barman tell you when you’ve had enough to drink. In all seriousness, I don’t necessarily disagree with that position – if you wanna declare war on your liver every Saturday night then go for it, I couldn’t care less. More importantly, it’s not my right or responsibility to stop you from doing so. Unless of course you have entered a venue which follows liquor licensing legislation. You know those posters that you can see in every bar in the state? Well, by entering a venue that displays those posters you agree to follow the rules as set out therein, and guess what, it’s my job to ensure that you do so.

Sure, it would be easy for me to turn a blind eye, I mean, what are the chances that liquor licensing police would come to our lowly pub on that particular evening? That is until you realise that the fine for serving liquor to an intoxicated person is in excess of $13000. I’m not sure how many venues would be likely to continue providing you with employment after you have cost them $13k. Furthermore, the fine for the person serving the drink to the intoxicated customer also exceeds $1300. That’s not a risk I’m willing to take.

If you were to argue that the term ‘intoxication’ is open to interpretation you would be right. Liquor Licensing Victoria suggests that a person “is in a state of intoxication if their speech, balance or co-ordination is noticeably affected and there are reasonable grounds for believing this is the result of the consumption of alcohol”. That’s a sketchy definition if ever I’ve seen one, I mean, how it could it not be? It’s not like we can breath-test every patron as they come up to bar in order to see if they are under a prescribed ‘intoxication threshold’.

A positive side effect of having intoxication so subjectively defined is that the bar staff get to decide when customers are “noticeably affected” by alcohol, not them. Which is good, because we’re sober and they clearly aren’t. In fact, the entire Liquor Control Reform Act of 1998 is tailored to protect those who are working behind the bar. If I decide that a patron is ‘intoxicated’, then I have every right to cut them off. If the patron disagrees with my judgment and becomes ‘quarrelsome’ then I have every right to ask them to leave the premises. Refusal to do so can land the patron with a $2000 fine.

This might all seem like a bit of power-tripping by a disgruntled hospitality employee and maybe it is. But as I said before, I don’t really care if you wanna give yourself alcohol poisoning every weekend – that’s your prerogative. Unfortunately for you though I like having a job and getting through my shifts without being abused by drunken fucktards.

So next time you feel like heading down to the local for a few frothies with the boys, don’t. It’s better for everyone if you get pissed at home…

I was lucky enough to spend last week enjoying the beautiful weather that NSW’s Bateman’s Bay had to offer. It was a great week of relaxing, swimming, cycling, walking, eating, and generally having a chance to recharge the batteries. Later in the week I happened to be lying on the beach watching Dad and the Bro boogie-boarding when I overheard a nearby conversation;

Daughter: What do you shoot Mummy?
Mother: We shoot all sorts of things. Rabbits, foxes, pheasants, quail, deer…

Now at this point you might be excused for thinking that Sarah Palin had put aside her vice-presidential campaign in order to head to a small coastal town in Eastern Australia for a holiday but alas, it was not the case. To resume;

Daughter: Do you shoot Bambi?
Mother: No we try not to shoot Bambi.
Daughter: Do you shoot Bambi’s mummy?
Mother: No we try not to shoot Bambi’s mother, but we do shoot Bambi’s daddy.
Daughter: Why do you shoot Bambi’s daddy?
Mother: When male deers (sic.) get older they grow antlers and try to hurt each other, so it’s ok to shoot them.

Now I’m no cervine expert, but I’m pretty sure that the fighting of adult male deer is hardcoded into their brains as a sort of ‘survival of the fittest’ mechanism. Furthermore, the suggestion that by shooting male deer we are somehow helping to control the deer population just makes me angry. I mean, its not like deer have survived all this time without our ‘help’ is it?

But most worrying about the mother’s response is that the children will now believe what she says. Now let me get one thing straight, I don’t really care what deluded beliefs you hold, or how you justify your actions to yourself, just don’t lie to your children.

In my anger I started thinking about the lies that parents routinely tell their children, in particular the lies that are the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and Santa. Now don’t get me wrong, like any other kid I enjoyed and looked forward to Easter, Christmas and losing teeth but surely there has to be some negative impacts as a result of lying to your children. How can you expect your children to grow up believing that it isn’t a great idea to tell lies if the things from which they generate the most happiness are, at their most fundamental level, lies?
Having said all that, what parent is going to deny their children the joys of Easter and Christmas for the sake of morality?

At the end of the day, parents will always act in accordance with what they think is best for their children and I suspect that a couple of lies are always going to be more popular in the long run than adhering to a strict moral code. Just don’t try to tell your kids that it’s ok to kill male deer just because they fight each other. Unless of course you are willing to kill your own children when they start to fight over who will sit in the front seat…

When you work in the hospitality industry it often pays to double check customers’ orders just to make sure that you are both on the same wavelength. However sometimes even one’s best attempts to get inside the customer’s head are foiled by acts of sheer stupidity. One such incident occurred at work this evening;

Me: How are you going?
Customer: Good. I was just wondering, would the Tuscan Lamb Salad be a big enough meal for me?
Me: It depends. If you are hungry it might not fill you up.
Customer: Ok, I might get a bruschetta as well then thanks.
Me: No problem, so that was to come out at as a main course with the salad?
Customer: Yes thanks.

For clarification’s sake, the bruschetta at our reputable establishment, as at most eateries, is normally served as an entree. Now following the above exchange I finalised the sale and printed the docket through to the kitchen for preparation. Before doing anything else I assured the chef that the docket was correct – one bruschetta for entree, for someone else on the same table, and one for main, for the customer in question. Just to be sure, I went to the table and double-checked;

Me: Sorry sir, I’m just making sure – you wanted your bruschetta served with your salad, yeah?
Customer: Yeah that would be great thanks.

Ok, simple enough. Or is it? Fast forward about 10 minutes to when the entree bruschetta is being taken out. Upon placing the bruschetta on the table Emily was greeted with the words ‘there is supposed to be another one of those’. After explaining to the men at the table that the docket listed the second bruschetta as a main course, she was told that she was wrong – it was for entree.
Now at this point I was starting to get more than a little frustrated with proceedings. Emily and I headed back to the kitchen and asked the chefs if they could prepare the second bruschetta to come out as soon as possible and explained the stupidity that was unfolding. The chefs prepared the second bruschetta and Emily took it back out – problem solved. Or was it?
Fast forward a further 10 minutes and Emily gets called back over to the table and is met with the unbelievable; ‘this bruschetta was supposed to come out with the main course’.
As if that wasn’t enough, try this one on for size; ‘This one has gone cold, can you bring out another one?’

Even if this guy’s ego was so precious that he couldn’t own up to the error of his ways, surely he would have said something when his bruschetta came out as an entree. But oh no, he just let it sit there and get cold before asking for another to be made up for him.

Tell me the world wouldn’t be a better place if hospitality staff were allowed to tell fuckwit customers exactly how dumb they are…