REAL STORIES FROM REAL BARTENDERS >>>

I've been a bartender for a long time. I have met countless freaks, jerks, pervs, sweethearts, rockstars and crazies. Even though it's a physically and mentally exhausting job, these are the colorful people that make it all worthwhile. Well, that and the tips.

I'd like to share with you some of my personal experiences behind the bar, along with the stories from some of my fellow bartenders. Each week - under the clever heading of "Behind Bars" - I will dig into my memory bank - and the incident log books that all bars keep - to bring you some of my favorite stories.

Names of bars, bartenders and patrons have been changed or withheld to protect the innocent.

And the not so innocent.

Cheers!

This week...

It was time to dry out for a while, so Behind Bars took an extra long smoke break. But, just like the reliable drunk that you always run into, slurring and staggering, Behind Bars is back with some more rounds of excitement.

Over the next few weeks I will blog favorite "caught in the act" stories from the never-ending list of shameless and entertaining shenanigans that drunken people find themselves in, and the sometimes hilarious, sometimes fucked up outcomesthat ensue.

Caught in the Act Part 1

"Hungry Man"

Once upon a time, bars had to pretend they were restaurants by offering patrons something from the kitchen. Often, that kitchen was a microwave, and TV dinners were on the menu. At the bar I was working at the time, Hungry Man Salisbury Steak was the specialty and priced at $14.95. Needless to say, no one ever bought them. So, way in the back of the bar, to appease the law, we had a freezer stuffed with Hungry Mans.

One night, we caught a rather large, drunk man trying to escape the bar with his sweatpants full of hungry man frozen dinners! He tried to swagger out the front, sweatpants resembling a Hefty garbage bag, the corners of many freezer burned meat packages poking through the fabric. (Insert blue balls joke here.) We were shocked and amused, as we demanded he hand over the goods. He awkwardly, and rather sadly, returned the stolen items. We thought about throwing them away, but returned the meals to their rightful place in the freezer in the back of the bar, thinking we'd better have them on hand, just in case someone got hungry. We are law-abiding bartenders, after all.

And what became of the swaggering sweatpants bandit? He was promptly 86'd and filed in the logbook under "Dumb Asses."

Check back next week for who gets caught, doing god knows what.

Cheers!

LINK: Past Behind Bars columns