I sat at the restaurant, one that I’ve frequented for years, and watched the floor manager try to placate the customer who got the new server on Friday night — you know, the one who probably shouldn’t be a server in the first place, but heard that it’s easy money and a good way to score drugs? She’s a little ditzy, definitely not cut out for a high volume weekend night shift, but she’s also a good kid, well-meaning and trying her best. She’s waited on me a number of times, and while I might question her abilities, I certainly can’t fault her attitude.

But this moron — and I say that in the old 1960s way, much the same way that people forty years from now will use the word “retarded” — is apparently suffering an aneurysm over the fact that he got unsweet tea instead of sweet, and that it’s taken five minutes longer than he expected to get his well done steak. His poor kids are shrinking underneath the table, while his wife eggs him on, both of them complaining that they’ve eaten here for a decade, at least, and they’ve never had service this bad, and how that girl doesn’t belong in a restaurant, much less a fine establishment such as this.

I think, “I hope my children kill me publicly if I ever act like this.”

And, “I hope my wife stabs me in the throat with a cocktail straw if I even hint at becoming this man.”

And, “It’s not her who doesn’t belong here, mister, because her loud complaining isn’t ruining my night out.”

And, “The more you tell them they’re right, the customer is wrong.”

I remember my days of waiting tables, of having that goddamned phrase drilled into me by the corporate types who were all about following the manual to the word and doing anything short of fellating the angry guest to make sure they came back. “The customer is always right,” we heard, and sure, there are plenty of times when the customer is in the right, the company representative is wrong, and some fellating needs to be handed out for free, on the spot, from the sexiest company member available. Orders are taken wrong, the kitchen goes down, the bartender makes your Maker’s Mark on the rocks with shards of a pint glass instead of ice…

Jason and I were talking the other night about working at the bar. He likes the fact that the staff we have now is like family. I like the fact that we can have a drink on the job, smoke if we want, tell horrible jokes, watch Wonder Showzen on the tiny television above the shelves. It’s decidedly non-corporate, the way that bars should be run. We’re not going to attract the family contingent — but then, how many families go drinking late night anymore? And how many bartenders actually want to deal with them?

But we both agreed that our favorite thing about working where we do, about slinging alcohol at a place that walks a fine line between pub and dive, is knowing that the customer is not always right. In fact, bear down on the wire and we’ll admit that around here, the bartender is always right. No one misuses that power — we’ll fix you a new drink if someone used yours as an ashtray, grab you a bottle if you’re positive that we didn’t give you the one you paid for. But don’t fuck around and start whistling at us, or you’re apt to get ignored. Rudeness to us or any of our regulars will get you tossed.

I like to think that the people that come in on a regular basis are maybe a little better for this, for knowing that there’s at least one place in the world that’s not afraid to stand up to them, to call them out on their bullshit self-important sense of entitlement. Put simply, we’re not willing to kowtow to you, because we don’t need your business. There are a lot of drunks in this town, and for every asshole like you, there are ten that are well behaved.

I wish more places would follow this logic. Sure, bad word-of-mouth can destroy your business, but do you really want that kind of business, anyway?

This is the kind of thinking that keeps me squarely in the lower-middle class and out of business schools at community colleges across the country.

Odds are good, anyway, that you’re being rude or obnoxious because you’ve been drinking Jagerbombs all night, and that pretty much makes us right from the word go. Because sure, we’ve been drinking two shots for every one that you’ve done. But we’ve got the alcohol, and you don’t.

Currently listening to The New Black by Strapping Young Lad.