Tom

I’ve been getting a lot of warnings about Tom lately.   Lady Chatterley and Tom own the bar together.  Tom is his real name.  Tom needs no disguise – he is already infamous, and nothing I could say about him on this blog could do anything but improve his infamy.

One of the reasons Tom is infamous is that he has owned numerous bars all over town.  He also hired Lil, who went on to buy and run the now famous Coyote Ugly Saloon. 

The other bartenders generally do not like Tom, except for Adelina, and that is only because she does whatever she wants and has been working  at the bar forever.   Adelina is even allowed to drink Patron.

But, for other bartenders, it is a different story.  Apparently, if Tom comes in during your shift, your shift is fucked. 

“It’s over,” Carol, one of my favourite bartenders, told me, “Like, you’re done.  The rest of your shift is going to suck.”

Apparently Tom walks around yelling belligerently and ordering round after round of shots.  He’ll buy the whole bar a round, then yell some more.  When he sees a customer with a pitcher of beer, he’ll go up to the customer, take the pitcher from their hands, and chug the whole thing.  This means that pretty much every customer who ordered a pitcher will come up and ask for a new one, assuming they don’t just leave the bar.

Ellen told me that he calls her all the time when she’s working.  He’ll call her if a customer comes in and then walks out again.  “Like, why did that customer come in and walk out – why didn’t they stay?” she rolled her eyes.  “Because they just came in to ask for directions.”

Another new girl, Josie, told me that Tom called her one shift, screamed at her for something she didn’t do, and then told she would get an extra $5 for every girl she got on the bar that night. She got 6 girls on the bar, and took an extra $30 home.  “I hope he remembers telling me that,” she told me, “I think he was drunk.”    

“I actually cut him off the last time he was here,” Carol said. 

“What did he do?”

She shrugged, “At first he pretended like it was a big joke, and got really loud and started saying shit like ‘Oh, the bartender thinks I’m too drunk.  Oh, the bartender’s cutting me off.’ Then he came back behind the bar and asked me for a shot of Maker’s.”  She shook her head.  “And I was like, ‘seriously Tom, take a break, have a glass of water, wait 20 minutes, then I’ll pour you a shot.’  That’s when he lost it.” She laughed, and imitated his low voice, “He was like, don’t fucking do this, Carol, don’t fucking do this. Get me a fucking shot.”

Carol held her ground.  “Then he stormed out of the bar,” she said, laughing. “And you know, now he’s a lot nicer to me on the phone.  I kind of think it might have been a test.”

I am really not looking forward to meeting Tom.