October 26, 2013

• So Not Your Beer Wench

  Not long ago, I attended a college friend’s wedding. They had an ‘intimate family and wedding party only’ type of thing with the receptions held in a hotel room. A very nice hotel room. This hotel room had a bar.  I was thirsty and the only place to get water was to go behind the bar. This is what I did.

  While leaving the bar, my friend’s new husband asked me to get him water. I am not one to turn down a request when asked nicely, so I reached over and filled a cup with water. I asked him if he wanted ice and he said “why yes.” As I was putting ice in his drink, my friend, a fellow brides maid came by and asked if I knew which bottle of coke was open. So I started looking at the bottles for the one I had opened earlier that morning.

  Somehow, the groom’s grandfather saw me behind the bar pouring out drinks and assumed it would be OK to put in an order. As I am not so sophisticated a woman that I would turn down odd ‘orders’ from men for the sake of my pride, I hesitantly said: “Alright, I can get you something to drink…”

  Here’s the thing: I was friends with the bride and her family. I hadn’t met the groom till the day before, and I sure as hell didn’t care to meet or remember his family, let alone his grumpy grand-pa. He’s from the south, and maybe this is normal in the south, but I’m a Yank wanna-be and will not ever be looked down upon because of my age, sex, or my race. So when this stranger tells me arrogantly and flatly that “I will walk you through my drink since you don’t look like you know what you’re doing.”, I tried my very best not to scowl at him for insulting me WHILE asking for my services.

  This young grandparent then proceeded to rattle off a list of instructions using jargon I didn’t know to produce his drink.  I do now realize that ‘finger’ meant my fingers, and not shots– and that he didn’t have a preference the type of whisky he wanted, (I DO know that bourbon and scotch are types of whiskies) — and more pertinently: That he ultimately wanted a whisky coke. But at the time, he was rattling off instructions without giving me any end-point or much respect for that matter. When I finally finished his snooty bourbon-coke: he topped off the experience by literally scoffing:

  “No. Put it on the table in front of me since I do not trust you to hand me a drink.”

  ….

  What. The. Fuk.

  I gave him his lousy drink, though I would have spat in it if I could have. And hustled out of the bar quickly before temptation possessed me least I reach over and throw the whole solo cup of two fingers and WHISKY  into his face.

  Even if I was some old-fashioned southern drink wench, the man could at least be polite to a stranger that he orders drinks from. Does he not realize that the bride is educated in engineering and most likely has friends that are equally educated in engineering? Never mind what he thinks of my educational history, what the doodle happened to good old fashioned common curtsy. I can believe that racist/sexiest/stupid people exist but I thought that they’d at least have the decency to mask it in an age where it is unfashionable to be a pompous elitist.

  Tisk “You don’t look like you know what you’re doing” is damn right bitch. I was educated to be an aerospace engineer; I’m nor your docile bar-bitch/go-to-Asian for a free bourbon-coke. If you’d even said ‘whisky and coke’ I would have been able to function just fine. But no, you had to be peculiar about instructions…

  “Do not trust you to hand me a drink” your ass. I don’t trust you to drive a car… moron.

  • 12:42 pm
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