Bartenders seeing some crazy stuff while on the job is almost a guarantee. Every customer has the potential to do something very unusual once the bartender serves them a few brews.
You would think that bartenders would eventually grown numb to theses types of shenanigans. But eventually, they'll see something that'll even make them do a double take. So, when they tell their standout customer stories, you know these stories are going to be WEIRD.
He Served Their Doppelgangers
“I had a couple come in one night. They ordered a Miller Lite and a glass of merlot. They hung out for bit and left.
Next night the couple comes in, sit down and I say, ‘Hi, bottle of Miller Lite and a glass of merlot?’ The guy says ‘How the heck do you know that?’ I said it’s just what you ordered yesterday. The couple says we have never been in here before.
I looked closer at a very similar looking, but completely different couple from the night before. But that was their drinks of choice.”
“We’ll Let The Police Know Of Your Problem Right Away”
“We used to have a bit of an illegal substance problem in the bar i worked in back in the ’90s. The manager came up with an idea to put Vaseline on the flat surfaces in the toilet cubicles with warnings as to why they were there which was to obviously stop people snorting it off them. Anyway fast forward a week and a VERY angry middle aged man storms up to the bar and demands to talk to whoever just ruined his fix and that he wanted to make an official complaint! We laughed and asked if we should report it to the police, at which point he left.”
That’s Quite A List
“Let’s see…
-Another bartender getting so wasted while working he fell asleep standing up. He didn’t get fired. Actually, he was a lovely, hard working guy and the bar we were working at is famous for being wild, most bartenders working there get sent home for being trashed on a monthly basis.
-College kids trying to do shots through their eyes. The one who tried was ‘smart enough’ to use 151 (drink with an abv around 75%). I’m not a doctor but I think it’d just clean the eye.
-Another bartender who thought it was hot when she opened bottles with her armpits. It wasn’t hot or impressive.
-A man who was upset at another bartender grabbed drink after drink off the bar and started throwing them at him, smashing all the mirrors behind the bar. He was upset because the bartender wouldn’t serve him, he already seemed inebriated in some way. No, they weren’t his drinks, he grabbed pints and rocks glasses from the guests sitting at the bar, the bartender kept ducking as the guy was going down the line.
-A new bartender was asked to get a bucket of ice from the ice machine, he came back his hands were bright red, he didn’t know he was supposed to use a scoop.
-Finding a notebook at the bar with fanfiction about one of the servers. To be fair, it WAS fairly well written!
-Being offered tips but instead of cash, things such as an expensive jacket, frozen meat, power tools, lottery tickets, horse riding lessons.
-College kids throwing up into the pitcher they were drinking from then continue drinking it. Broke college kids are a species unto themselves, they never cease to amaze.
-A man who looked about 60 walked up to the bar, introduced himself as Satan and tried to fight every man he could. It took 3 grown men to get him outside.
-A regular would buy a shot for every woman in the room regardless of age or if they were single or alone then go from table to table hoping for the best. It never worked.
-Married dude trying to hit on women by buying a drink, rolling a 100 bill up, putting it in the mouth of the bottle and having it delivered to them. Worked a couple times.
-Any corner or slightly secluded area in a bar can and will be used as a bathroom by wasted people.
-Wasted guy takes a bite out of his glass, continues to finish his drink despite the blood.
-A girl who looked about 25 taking her dentures out to do shots with friends. Apparently adult beverages are bad for the dentures.
-A set of twins found getting it on in the bathroom. They were male twins in their late 20’s early 30’s, one giving the other one a bj.
-A guest yelling at another bartender. When I went over to try to calm him down he burst into tears, he remained crying as his burger arrived, while he ate it, as he paid his bill, and as he left. He became a regular that we all called crybaby.”
The Grossest Revenge
“I was working in a high volume nightclub in an annex bar. We were furthest away from the main service area so we coveted our tools and supplies because we would have to brave a massive crowd if something went missing.
We had two wells but only one Boston shaker tin between us. Don’t ask me why but that’s just how we operated for years.
One night a wasted chick with that look in her eyes had her hand hovering near the shaker on the bar mat and our tip jar. I knew she had sticky fingers and she inevitably fulfilled the low expectations I had for her and grabbed the tin and tried to walk off with it.
I lunged over the bar and tried to grab it back (as someone was screaming for 30 shaken lemon drops in my ear). I’ll never forget her face. She went full Gollum and contorted herself to steal our precious shaker. The security saw my distress and were closing In on her across the busy room as I was screaming to give me back my sacred tin.
Just as they were about to grab her she looked me dead in the eyes. Vomited into the tin. Then threw the contents directly into my face and handed it back to me.
I was so busy I basically had to wipe myself off throw my hair up and continue working
We still only have one tin.”
Unwanted Marriage Proposals
“This has been several years ago. I tended bar at a chain family-style restaurant in a little southern mining town in the US. I had a lot of regulars that I adored. There were a few weirdos though.
One guy would come in every night and order chicken strips and a drink. He was a middle aged guy, very polite and was an engineer of some sort with a coal company. We would chat, but I never got a vibe from him that he was interested in me. One night he comes in with a woman. They sit at the bar and he introduces her as an old classmate. I serve them, and out of nowhere she goes into this speech about how I need to go out with this guy, he’s so great, he’s got money… etc. He has never asked me out mind you. I said I already had a boyfriend but thank you for the offer. He completely comes apart. He is whining and mewling how wrong I was to lead him on every night (I definitely did not) and that he would do anything to be with me. I restated that I was already in a serious relationship at which time he said, ‘All you hos are the same. How much money would will it cost me to be with you! I’ll pay. I’m rich!’ and then he started CRYING, and all the other patrons can hear. It was insane. His friend said I was a ho anyway if I was working at this particular establishment, and I should take his money. My boss was alerted by another employee what was going on and asked the two to leave and not come back.
Another time an old guy came in—had to be in his late 60’s early 70’s – had a drink, paid, and left. No biggie. He came back an hour later with an even older women in tow that he introduced as his mother. She asked me to make a cup of coffee, I guess as some kind of test because when I brought her coffee back, she took a sip and said, ‘That’s some darn fine coffee. She will do just fine.’ He proceeds to tells me that he brought his mother to meet me because he wanted to get her approval to make me his next wife. I thought he was kidding. He was not. His mom told me I need to marry him because he had lots of money to spend on me and I could quit working and live the good life. I politely declined. I did find out a few years later that there were some waitresses there that actually were trading services for oxy or had sugar daddies helping pay for their illegal habits. I had no idea at the time. Makes sense now that they called me Pollyanna. I was very naive. Glad to out of that terrible town.”
You Never Know What Someone Is Going Through
“I was working the bar on a weekday. Mostly super slow but I got good hourly pay and most people who come in tipped. There was a guy who came in, well dressed. Said ‘shot of wild turkey and a bud light platinum’. He had a few of those rounds. Then he went to pay and just laid 100 bucks on the counter. I went to get his change and when I turned around he was out the door.
I went to get his glass and bottle when I noticed he left a pamphlet and a coin on the table. The paper was for a funeral, it had a picture of the man, his wife and their daughter. They had died in a car accident. The coin he left behind had a V for 5 inside of a triangle, it said ‘to thy own self be true’ and there was a prayer on the back. It was a 5 year coin given out at AA. That poor guy.”
A Typical Thrupple
“I work in a bar. One afternoon, a middle aged man and a teen/early twenty-something couple—a boy and girl whom I assumed were either his kids, or one of them was his kid and the other was his/her SO—stopped directly in front of the bar’s big front window.
The older man and boy go to hug, no big deal. They start making out. The girl doesn’t react, then inches closer. The man then reaches up and starts feeling the girl’s chest while he’s making out with the boy. The three of them are just standing in the street like that–the boy and the man goin at it, the girl hangin’ out getting her chest fondled, looking kinda bored–until BOOM! all three pull away and act casual as an older woman about the man’s age walks up. She greets everyone with a peck on the cheek, then all four of them walk away together, looking like a happy family.
There was one other person in the bar with me, a regular. We had both watched the whole thing in silence. I asked him if he saw what I saw. He said yes, and that was it. We’ve never talked about it.”
Just A Quick Power Nap
“Had a guy who’d come in a few times a week and just order Yuengling.
That’s cool, this is PA so what else is he gonna drink, but we were a pretty big craft place so it was a little odd that he came to us, but he was a cool dude so whatever.
Anyway, one night he’s in with friends. They’re all drinking and our dude is ordering shots, so everyone’s having a good time.
We close around 2, no problem.
However, our manager and owner get a notice around 4 that the alarms are going off. They get to the bar, no problems, maybe they just got tripped, they both go home.
Next day, we’re looking at the security tapes, and our little buddy apparently fell asleep on one of the couches, woke up around 3:30am and left, but only after picking up his last bottle and placing it on the bar as he would any other night.
Next time he came in he looked a little sheepish, but we assured him there was no problem, and all his drinks that night were on the house for being such a good guy and not stealing anything, and cleaning up after himself.”
Sounds Like A Wild Night
“It was the dinner rush in a popular restaurant during the summer. I was one of 3 bartenders. I was working the service bar while the other bartenders served those seated at the bar.
A man and his wife come in and after a few drinks start arguing. The argument gets more and more heated as the drinks go down. The man starts cussing at his wife, starts threatening her and grabbing her arm and she starts crying. He tells her to shut up and that he’s gonna go to the bathroom.
After he goes to the bathroom, a regular from a table a few feet away gets up (I’ll call him Joe), excuses himself from his family (wife, 2 daughters) and goes to the lady at the bar who was threatened. Joe tells her he saw how her husband was acting and if she felt threatened that he could get her away from him safely. Just wanted to let her know he has her back.
The lady who was threatened becomes IRATE and starts screaming at Joe, telling him to mind his own effing business. Everyone is staring in disbelief. Joe apologizes and goes back to his family but she is not letting up. She keeps screaming at him from the bar, calling him and his family all sorts of unsavory names.
Her husband comes out of the bathroom, still angry and asking what the heck is going on. His wife tells her husband what Joe said and that he’s a piece of garbage prying into other people’s lives.
Naturally this doesn’t sit well with the husband who takes his seat and starts hurling his own insults at Joe and his family from the bar.
Joe is trying to ignore everything, hoping the problem goes away but the husband will not let up. Everyone near the bar is totally uncomfortable so the manager comes and tells the husband he needs to calm down or he’s gonna have to leave.
The husband flips out at that and slings his drink mug off the bar. Not sure if it was an accident or not but the mug flew and hit Joe’s daughter in the face and shattered. Blood everywhere.
By that point Joe is flying out of his seat, wanting to kill the abusive husband but is being held back by other customers who are seated by him.
The customers seated at the bar by the abusive husband? They swarmed his butt and stomped him out. It was brutal.
Of course police and EMS were called. Little girl had a couple cuts and a broken nose but was otherwise fine. The abusive husband had a broken arm, some cracked ribs, one eye swollen shut and his lip was split a few times.
When talking with the cops, somehow everybody claimed that they didn’t know how the jerk got messed up but they knew what started it.
Rowdy couple got arrested, Joe and his family had their meal comped with some free desserts and stuff from the gift shop. The people at the bar with bloody knuckles, well we forgot to charge them for a couple rounds of drinks.”
She Never Forgot
“I worked at a dive-y sports bar for years and saw all kinds of gross and terrible behavior, but the thing that stands out the most was this: a woman I went to school with years and years ago came in one night and got pretty wasted. We were trying to close and she hadn’t left so I asked her what her plan was to get home and she broke down.
She started going on and on about how she knew I hated her because of the peer review comments I had made on a presentation she did in our capstone class in college. I hadn’t seen or talked to this woman in 7+ years and we had all since graduated and gotten jobs. We were in a pre-law program that shared it’s capstone class with the criminal justice program. Her presentation was something about these new DCF policies and the presentation itself wasn’t terrible, it wasn’t amazing either, but what tipped the scales is that at the end she showed us a video she found of facebook of graphic child abuse. Several people left the room and those of us who stayed were just shocked and confused because while DCF does handle child abuse cases, the video (which didn’t even take place in our state) was very much outside the scope of the assignment. Like are you trying to convince us that child abuse is bad? You’re talking to a bunch of soon-to-be paralegals and cops…..we know it’s bad. I imagine I brought that up in my review but I truly had not thought about it or her until she brought it up.
The bouncers had to drag her out.”
At Least He Didn’t Flush Himself Down The Toilet
“I once had an old man come during a very quiet shift, asked to use the loo, I pointed him in the direction and carried on whatever I was doing. About thirty/forty minutes go by and I suddenly remember that happened and I hadn’t seen him leave. I hurry to the toilet thinking I’ve got the scene from Clerks going on, when I arrive the toilet door is locked and there’s no answer from inside.
Fearing the worst I grabbed the tool kit and got the door open. Inside were a pair of shoes and socks on the floor, with a phone on top of the toilet. I freak out and run around the building searching for the guy, my brain is going mental, I eventually have the brain wave of checking CCTV. I find out the guy had ran outta the toilet with no shoes or socks on and out one of the fire escapes. I never did find out why or how he relocked the toilet door.
Spun me out for the rest of my shift to say the least.”
“Cricket Problem Solved”
“It was a Monday afternoon, a man who is objectively a 10, just oozing dominance, came in with his shy girlfriend who was a 4-5. When I walked over to introduce myself, he pulled a classic power move and decided to switch tables.
A few minutes later, the man returned from the bathroom as I walked over with their drinks. He leaned in and (I thought he) said , ‘You have a cricket in the bathroom.’ I clarified, ‘We have a cricket in the bathroom?!’ He said no, ‘Can we have a quickie in the bathroom?’ His girlfriend just smiled back at me. I thought he was joking and I ultimately said something along the lines of ‘Of course not.’ He asked why, and I asked why he had asked me. Our bathrooms are down a hallway and I likely wouldn’t have noticed if they both went in together.
I immediately went to tell our cook about the strange exchange, and when I peeked through the kitchen window, they were both gone! They returned like two minutes later, I mean, very very quickly. I was thinking to myself there is no way they could get it in so fast.
But when he left he signed the check, ‘cricket problem solved’ and left me a 100% tip. Maybe that’s their thing. Not just doing it in public bathrooms. No. They need someone else to know they’re doing it.
I haven’t seen them since, and I like to believe they’re still out there, solving cricket problems.”
26 Is Considered Expired Goods
“I had a middle aged man come in and say something along the lines of..
‘I have some kind of car. Do you like men with cars? How old are you? Oh yes I can see. Women under 25 are so pure and innocent. After 25 they are no good anymore. But you, you are pure and innocent right? I would like to just rub my hands all over you. But not enter you. You know, because you’re pure.’
Bouncer kicked him out.”
He Probably Ruined Dinosaurs For Those Kids
“I saw a lot of things tending bars for 10 years, but this was definitely the weirdest.
It was an upscale restaurant and there was a guy approaching toddlers throughout the dining room and asking them ‘Do you like dinosaurs?’ After 3 or 4 of these innocent-enough encounters, he suddenly jumps onto a table, squats down real low, puts on his ‘t-rex arms’ and starts screeching like a Jurassic Park velociraptor. He’s craning his neck back and forth, jumping from table to chair, to next table, stalking the kids and screeching at them. Takes a good five minutes before his party is able to corral him and get the heck out of there.”
Were Their Names Scully and Mulder?
“Dude and his wife walk in. They seem like normal people. Very friendly, very polite. We get chatting and his demeanor changes from lighthearted to serious. He leans in and quietly says ‘Can I tell you something?’ His wife puts her hand on his shoulder and says ‘Dear, please’. He looks at her and says ‘Honey, I think we can trust him. She looks at me very solemn for a few seconds then says ‘Okay but keep your voice down’. I was dying to know what they were gonna tell me so I had full attention on them.
They start telling me how they’ve witnessed inter dimensional space aliens traveling through wormholes above their house and that they’ve each been personally abducted. The husband kept saying ‘I know this sounds like crazy nonsense but I promise you I’m not lying’. The wife, who didn’t talk much during the encounter, kept nodding her head and saying ‘He’s not wrong’ here and there. I didn’t really believe any of what they were saying but I just thought it was cool I finally had a crazy person bartender story.”
She Had Quite A Day
“This woman comes in and buys the most expensive bottle the bar serves. She walks over to my group (12 people), tells us that she just found out that her rich husband has been cheating on her, and that all our drinks (no matter how many) for the rest of the night are on his credit card, just as long as we all sing Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire with her.
We all sang. We drank. She went back to the bar after singing with us, and continued to get seriously wasted by herself. We left. She paid.”
What A Charming Woman
“I was awkwardly offered a quickie in the adjacent men’s toilets from a trampy looking middle aged woman (I was 18 at the time). When I politely declined the offer she proceeded to have a chat with my boss. I didn’t even have much time to wonder if she was making a complaint or something before they both left for his office. He came back out acting as if he’d just spent time with a supermodel.
I acted dumb and asked ‘Who was that?’
He nonchalantly replied ‘Dunno. Oh, errrr that guys wife’ and pointed to the man I’d just poured a drink for.
My boss was full of dodgy business practices, was a complete rip off artist, let us drink on the job so long, and apparently likes random hookups from whomever offers. The whole business lasted a month, not unlike his previous 10 attempts.”
0 to 100 Real Quick
“I’ve seen a guy go from 0 to 100 in less than half an hour. He kept asking for Stroh 80%. After I already gave him 2, I refused giving him more, seeing the state he was in. My co-bartenders however didn’t know, so he ended up doing 5 or 6 shots with 80% in under half an hour. That’s equivalent to 10-12 shots, alongside whatever else he was drinking. Luckily a friend of his caught on and helped me feed the guy shots of water as if they were normal shots (he was asking for more). Next hour or so went fine and the guy was wobbling on the dance floor. All of a sudden his legs gave up, and his friends had to permanently support him. He ended up throwing up in the hall and outside. We almost called an ambulance, but luckily one of his friends was sober enough and took him to his own room.
Our bar is pretty small and a part of the building I live in, so most of the times it’s regulars, and there’s never really anything spectacular or weird, so this was actually pretty entertaining.”