GET THE F**K OUT NOW!

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When I have a night off, I will sneak out after midnight to my local for a pint or two. (ahem) When last call comes I do not question the time, I pay my bill immediately and I vacate the premises before the bartender tells me to finish my drink.

Its called courtesy, respect, etiquette. It is something I learned from my Mom.

Oddly, I find it to be in short supply when I am behind the bar.

I work in a really nice little bar. I work with extraordinary people overseen by an exquisite lady. Our little joint is popular and for that I am truly grateful.

We stay open late, so we tend to get a little rush at last call. And make no mistake, 99.9% of our customers are awesome people, including those that I had to yell at tonight.

Maybe it is just me and my crankiness. I've worked a lot lately (my choice) and recently survived The Taste Of  The Danforth,  the largest neighbourhood festival in this country.

As I walked in tonight I had high hopes for a mellow affair, but the first dagger was a party of twenty booked in for 10pm on a Sunday night. (seriously, are you kidding me) The equally disgruntled Miss Jocund and myself managed to get through that.

I was granted permission to give last call a bit early, in the vain hope that this might clear the desperadoes. But it was not to be, and I can't tell you how much I enjoy begging people to finish their drinks night after night after night.

Even more fun is begging them to leave the premises twenty minutes after I have removed their drinks.

Night after night after night.

And just to top things off was the dork who climbed the fence to join his friends on the patio at 3 am Monday morning.

So let me give you people a little primer on how life works if I am giving you last call.

• There is only one last call. You may not run to the bar at 1:59:30 and order eight B52's. I gave you the opporunity, you didn't take it, now you can suck me off.
• When you get your bill pay it immediately. It would be nice if we could cash out.
• When I tell you that you have five minutes to finish, I mean it. Our liquor license is sacrosanct, and I do not relish the thought of telling my colleagues and my boss that the reason we have to close for a week is due to my negligence. And yes, the inspectors have pulled in at 3am.
• After your drink is removed at 2:45 am, you should vacate within five minutes. If you don't, you are a complete douchebag.

Get it? Got it? Good.

Are you people so bereft of ideas that you must cling on to hanging out in some bar until the last possible minute, night after night after night? Don't waste your breath, cos I already know the answer, and it saddens me.

Unfortunately, my mother didn't raise everybody.

I thank you so much  for your cooperation in this matter and  I look forward to serving you in the future. But right now I would appreciate it if you could show a modicum of respect for the business, the lady who owns it, and the staff who run it.

http://www.goyestoeverything.com

Climbing The Ladder

Image by Artcatcher via Flickr

"Stock, we need a piece count. Go get it now!" That was the command from The Centurion as I stood on the deck of a flatbed truck parked on the edge of a dock that day in the height of an early nineties west coast summer in a northern British Columbian fishing village.

I looked over the edge to see it was low tide in these northern waters, and therefore a long way down, and a long way back up, using a freely swaying chain ladder in a high wind. Fortunately, I was wearing wet gum boots, which I am sure is the top choice of footwear for those in any extreme sport.

A 'piece count' is an estimation of what a fishing boat is carrying in terms of species, and it is done in order to facilitate the more efficient unloading and recording of the catch. In my particular case, I was unloading salmon boats, so I needed to find out, how many pink,spring, sockeye, chum and coho were on board.

Given that Pink salmon were worth 19 cents per pound and Sockeye were worth $3 or so, its important to know the difference. Knowledge of the "piece count" also contributed to trucking issues, given that we were a temp operation that relied on semi trailers for storage.

I won't bore you with all the details, but a piece count is key to unloading a boat quickly and efficiently. The salmon season is short, and unloading a boat has a lot in common with a NASCAR pit stop. Get them in and out quickly.

A deckhand or two is dispatched to Prince Rupert (30 km away) to buy about a grand worth of supplies, while the rest of the crew watches the graders (me) for accuracy. Another is stationed at the tally shack, to ensure accurate recording of the catch as it is weighed. There is a lot of money involved, so it is hard to blame the boat for having someone hanging over my shoulder as I decide whether a fish is a pink or a sockeye.

The scrutiny tended to become even more intense when skippers would learn that the guy who was grading their catch on this remote dock was from Toronto. To this day, I will give $50 to anyone in Toronto who can identify a salmon species more accurately than myself.

For some reason, this invaluable skill has not furthered my Bay Street ambitions in the least.

But, I digress. I was talking about climbing down a swaying and lengthy chain ladder.

Did I mention that I had no business being involved in unloading fishing boats, that a pussy like me should stick to pouring drinks and that I should stay well away from real men doing real work?

Oops, digressing again. This is about a long hanging ladder. The worst part was letting my lower body hang down as my gumbooted feet felt for a grip on the top rung of the chain ladder. Engaged, I began the long descent on my swaying conveyance, all the while willing myself not to look down.

As I reached the bottom, I thought I was done, but no. My landing pad was a slippery, waterlogged boom, coated in a teflon like moss. I struggled to climb on board, and was greeted by a number of arms from the crew straining to help me, much to my humiliation.

People who fish for a living tend to be like that. They risk their lives and they depend on each other in a way that you and I will never fully know, and when they see an idiot like me struggling, they reach out to help.

I got the piece count, and headed back up the ladder. By the time I got to the top, my knees were like jello and I had to sit down for a moment.

As I paused, I asked myself what some soft little city boy from Toronto was doing in this job so far from home and my element? Why am I driving a forklift? Why am I climbing this ladder?

But you know, all these years later, I am so glad that I threw myself into that unlearned world. I cast myself out into the unknown and forced myself to have a new experience. And years from now, when I am relegated to my rocking chair, I will look back on that chance I took and I will smile to myself.

I hope that you take the same chances in your own life, that you climb your own ladder,  so that when you are old and grey, you will have a similar smile on your face

http://www.goyestoeverything.com.