Since starting my work as a bartender in 2021, I have collected a wide range of Bar Stories- the good, the bad, and the ugly. This series is designed to shine a light on those stories that deserve telling, featuring stories from my own experience as both the customer and the server. Without further ado, strap in and enjoy these tales.
Olympic athletes- known to display exceptional levels of athleticism, outstanding abilities that the ordinary cannot fathom reaching, and strict adherence to their craft. There was one night that I was working the bar on a Friday, alongside my mate who is pretty switched on and has a good eye for detail. At about 6pm, the place is starting to pick up. More people are coming in, more orders are coming through, so I'm there just working away at the bar.
Around this time a party of three walk in. I'm still busy making these drinks, when my mate comes up to me and goes, 'Table 3 that just walked in, one of them is an Olympian, she has the five rings tattooed!' I was still shaking up a few cocktails at this point so I didn't really think much of it. But few minutes later, there's a bit of a buzz among both the floor and kitchen staff as they try and find out who this mystery Olympian is.
So these guys order their first round of drinks. Just three glasses of white wine, nothing too out of the ordinary for a summer night. And then someone finds out who this Olympian is- and she's picked up a couple medals at her sport's World Championships (for disclosure we will not be naming this individual. We might let it slip on our paid articles though. Oops.) She also used to go to the same high school as me but in a different graduating year. So as the night goes on, she keeps ordering these glasses of wine. At around 7:15pm, she's ordered the fifth glass. A bottle serves five glasses, so she's essentially had a bottle herself. It is at this moment that the table decides to tell the staff that they have to be out at 7:30pm for a show, and this Olympian has got up and gone to the bathroom. Five glasses of wine, pretty standard to go flush out the system, but the people who normally drink five glasses don't look as drunk as she did. As the servers try to solve the issue with the two other people still at the table, the Olympian returns from the bathroom, falls over a chair and knocks over a wine glass. Glass and wine go everywhere on a customer's table next to theirs, and she starts laughing.
So this leads to a few problems:
The customers who have had wine and glass shards spilt all over their table aren't feeling too hot.
We gotta clean up this mess when the place is busy and other people need to be attended to.
This Olympian is not getting up off the floor. Not a great look.
Still waiting on that broken glass apology to be honest.
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