Idiots are bad.  Idiots who think they are brilliant are worse.  Idiots who think they are brilliant and also roam around looking for fights are dangerous.

I can always tell, you know?  It’s not just because my bar has a “regulars only” vibe to it so the people I see most I know, it’s that quality a person gives off when you know they could be trouble later on.  And when alcohol is involved, that trouble can escalate very quickly.

Tuesday night, some dude came into the bar and said he hadn’t been there in years.  I’d never seen him before.  He sat down, opened Sauce magazine, and started to bitch about everyone and everything in it.  He had the authority because he’d worked in fine dining restaurants for 20+ years or something.  This person was stupid.  This woman was a bitch.  This guy was a good bartender but a total douchebag.

“Have you ever sat at his bar?” he asked.  “Douchebag.  No fucking personality.  Douchebag the whole fucking night.”

“Hmmmm,” I replied.  “Did you sit at his bar and call everyone douchebags all night?”

Then he started telling me about how he didn’t pay his cable bill, so the “assholes at AT&T” cut it off.  He called them back and “whined and bitched and bellyached for 20 to 30 minutes” before they agreed to re-instate it with a $30 reconnect fee.  He didn’t want to pay the fee, so he demanded a supervisor and spent another “20-30 minutes bitching them out” and got his cable turned back on for free.

And he was happy about it.  Shit, he was glowing.

“So let me get this straight,” I said.  “You didn’t pay your cable bill, and you’re pissed that they shut it off.  Then they offer to re-connect it for the fee outlined in your contract, the one you signed, and you don’t think that’s fair.  And you spent an hour of your time and two other people’s time on this issue.”

“Yeah!  And I made $30!”

“They gave you $30?”

“No, but I didn’t have to pay it.”

“Then you didn’t make $30.  You just didn’t lose it, but you also spent an hour crying about the cable bill that you didn’t pay on, anyway.”

He failed to see the logic in this, and I guess it wasn’t my place to point it out (um, repeatedly), but damn.  It didn’t help that he continued to bring it up, and that every unbidden story he had featured a whole cast of people who were all assholes, cocksuckers, or some other insult.  That includes the entire nation of Germany.  Also, did you know that there are no rural areas in all of Germany?  According to this guy, at least.

(And he’d never heard of “Germans love David Hasselhoff.”  An idiot with no sense of humor?  No way…)

Every time he paid for a beer ($2.50, look out!), he complained a) about the price and b) that he had so many large bills and didn’t know if he could pay with them.  I made change for fifties twice, and after that I politely asked him to use the change I’d given him.  I was tempted to remind him that I didn’t come here to be impressed by other people’s money, and that real rich people didn’t flaunt a wallet full of cash in bars, but at this point it wouldn’t have mattered.

Shortly after, he accused someone of stealing a $50 from him.  I’d seen him put the $50 back in his wallet, which (naturally) he didn’t believe.  In the next 20 minutes, he got into a fistfight with two of my other customers, caused me to call the cops, and walked off while calling me a stupid bitch.  Repeatedly.

To which I replied, “That’s terrific, retard, but I’m not the one getting kicked out of a bar.”

I don’t care much about being called a bitch.  Oh, really?  You think you’re the first one to think so?  Get in line, Chief.  There’s a long list of pissed off people in my personal history, and very few of them have caused me to lose any sleep.  I certainly don’t care enough about being called a bitch to start a fistfight in a bar, especially in a bar where everyone seems to know someone except for me.  The difference between you and I, see, is that although I may be a bitch, I’m not an idiot.  Also I have manners, which you’d probably never guess from this blog.

Lest you think I end everything on such a pissy note, here’s a PET OTTER!  Ohmygodohmygodohmygod.  Otters. Whenever Graham and I go to the zoo, I force him to walk over to the otters with me.  I recommend watching this on mute, because the song sounds like something John Mayer wrote after his neuter-nuts operation, but pussier.  Much like Michael K, it almost makes me forget about when I lived in San Diego and some woman was swimming off the coast and got mauled to death by sea otters.  No joke.  I’ve seen sea otters.  They’re HUGE and apparently brutal.