10 bartenders share the painfully funny reasons they hate working St Paddy's Day.
Any service industry worker will tell you, holidays are a nightmare.
If you have ever had the misfortune of working as a server in Times Square on New Years Eve, or as a 'jello shot girl' at a TGIFridays on...any given Friday, you know that holidays can be an exhausting nightmare of self-involved partiers and nightmare lightweights. Here is a delightful sampling of strif shared by the people who serve you. Enjoy and tip accordingly.
10 tantalizingly traumatic stories from battered holiday bartenders:
1. Squatter's Rights
One of my faves, last year a girl fell asleep on the toilet. When we tried to get her out, she FREAKED and started screaming at everyone to get out of her house! Why were we in her bathroom??? How did we get into her apartment?? We just gestured like...maam....this is clearly a bar 😭 it still took a lot of convincing before she accepted she was NOT at home. -ihavetoomanyplants
2. Three's Company 86ed
I was a bar back as a teenager. I grew up in a suburban New York area with a huge Irish and Irish American population. I worked in a nice large bar and restaurant that had actually been transported from Ireland here.
Even as the bar back I would make great money on St Patrick’s Day because people obviously over indulged or got it in their head that they should definitely get a round of some high end whiskey we would have to climb up a ladder to get.
The flip side of that was amateurs throwing up in the waitress station ice bins and the bathroom. After dealing with all that one night I was checking the building prior to closing and the manager was behind me doing the same.
I was finishing up checking the bathrooms and I knocked on the ladies room door prior to opening the door. There was no answer so I walked in and two ladies were going to town on some guy.
The manager was right behind me and told 16 year old me to get out and for them to leave. To really make it embarrassing, my mom was the manager yelling at them and telling me to get out and stop staring. - TK1129
3. Short and Sour
Bartender/server in NYC here. I hope I just die. - NitroColdbrewCocaine
4. One Man's Trash is Another Man's Trash
I did an entire shift wearing a promo foam Guinness hat. A few people wanted to try it on for photos, but I assured them it was gross from sweating in it. Still, huge tips all day. At the very end of the night, a dude comes from the bar area, wasted, and MUST have my hat.
I warn him about the sweat and he doesn't care. He started at $100, but for some reason I wanted to keep the hat and said no (probably because I had already made bank that shift). He would not stop and in the end paid me like $250 for this stupid a** hat I got for free. - Imalawyerkid
5. Heavy is the Rag That Cleans
I remember my first St. Patrick’s Day. Back then, I was the Dishwasher that got to clean up all the puke. I got all of the mess, minus the part about making so more money than I did any other day. - ranting_chef
6. Is the Toothfairy Irish?
I tell this story all the time. I worked in a bar that had a window out to the street, and one St. Patrick’s day I was in the well closest to the window staring out it and hating my life. Just in time for me to see a girl trip crossing the street.
She went face first into the curb and knocked out all her front teeth. It was horrible. Luckily for her there was an ambulance down the street for a suspected heart attack, so she got first aid pretty quickly. - hollylll
7. Is the Toothfairy Irish? (Part II)
I remember watching this very drunk girl trying to text while holding her shoes. I told everyone else to watch as she slowly kept leaning forward while walking. 3 steps later she did a full face plant, and her shoe knocked out some of her teeth. There were medics all over the place so she was quickly scooped up, but i still feel like an a**hole for how hard we all laughed.
8. A True Saint
The only year I worked at a bar for St Paddy's Day, my boss had us all come in at 3pm, gave us a $100 bill, and told us to go home. He was closing the bar for the night, because, quote, 'I'm not doing this shit again.'
He gave us a list of bars with owners he knew who'd let us work for that night if we wanted. I was up for it, but everyone else had worked that day before and convinced me to go the hell home.
$100 was a decent amount in 1994, so it was worth a lot more than it is now. I heard a lot of nightmare stories later from friends who worked at other bars, and I was perfectly good with my $100. - jorwyn
9. Groundhog St. Patrick's Day
I remember one customer getting pretty drunk in the morning and passing out. He woke up a few hours later and thought it was the next day. It took his roommates forever to convince me it was the same day. - gornzilla
10. Open House
This reminds me of when I was walking home from the club I worked in at 5am and there was a lad passed out on a patch of grass.
I went over to wake him and tell him he needs to go home and after he woke all he kept saying to me was “yes! I’ll get up in a minute but could you please close my door it’s freezing! It’s freezing in here!” And he wouldn’t open his eyes. He thought he was in bed I think.