Come Back When You’re an Adult

Sometimes it’s like I forget that the function of my job is basically a terrible recipe for decision making: first I dull people’s common sense with booze and then I ask them to spend the rest of the evening making choices that will not affect my livelihood, and preferably theirs as well.

In the years that I’ve done this job I am flabbergasted time and again by the things that drunks do and the sheer malleability of their brains. Sometimes the latter seems almost like witchcraft, as if the idea for zombies didn’t originate from Haiti, but rather a bar full of stumbling drunks being relieved of their wives and wallets.

More than once I’ve caught someone lurching towards the door holding their car keys. I find it’s best to nonchalantly approach them and ask, “What are you up to?”

To which they’ll reply, “I was just going to drive myself home.”

To which I say, “I thought you told me you weren’t going to drive.”

And, momentarily hypnotized by confusion they’ll falter and say, “I told you I wasn’t going to drive, didn’t I?”

“You did. You also told me you’d pick up your keys tomorrow… there they are, thank you. Which one belongs to your front door? I see, there you are. And that I was to call you a cab.”

“I’ll come for my keys just after you open at eleven. Could you call me a cab?”

“I’d be happy to.”

If you’ve ever been curious as to how someone has stolen your locked car and your identity it was probably the shady the waitress from the night before that you gave your pin number and keys to.

Over the last decade or so AGLC[1] has become stricter and stricter, to the point that any mishap that befalls your customer can be traced back to you. Should they have driven drunk you can be placed at fault for serving them (even if you insisted on calling them a cab and they slipped out the back door while pretending to wait for it). This is ridiculous. If you are old enough to drink in a bar you’re old enough to make your own decisions. Waitressing is already like a type of adult babysitting, but now we also have to risk being sued along with accepting that adult humans sometimes vomit in public?

Why is it the server’s fault if you woke up missing a kidney and that you fell asleep with your door open and now everything is missing from your house, even the doors? I do feel bad that strangers took the time to clean out your stash of Pop Tarts and then were so bold as to stick around and do their dishes, but don’t you think the responsibility might fall on you in the end?

Call me negligent if you like—but you can drive, vote and even marry the broad on the bar stool next to you that just might be your second cousin—at this point I think that’s on you for deciding that you absolutely needed to have another beer.

[1] Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission