Pub life was never intended to be normal, and I would hate it if it was, its actually like life has been drinking beer and dirty shots!
To all of those who say that the pub must mean that I am awash with offers of female attention let me remind you that we are no longer in the eighties. There is an element of female attention in this job, even for rough old goats like me, but mostly it comprises of women old enough to be your grandmother.
On occasion the age bar lowers and a window of opportunity arises (or my resolve slips) but inevitably the fact that I am at work will mess any dynamic up. The other night I had a series of conversations that summed this scenario up brilliantly:
Would you like to go out for a drink when you next get a night off? (her)
Yeah that would be good
Really? even after last time when I over sedated my nerves?
Yeah that’s all cool, it happens, lets do it next week
(interval)
So what are you doing now?
Working
Are we gonna have a drink?
Yep when I have a night off
F*ck you I want a man who says I am hot and will drop everything to take me out
At this point I have had a glass of wine accidentally tipped over me in what, I can only presume, was an attempted seduction. I am at work, tired, sober and not really in the mood; in the course of my shift you have gone from Jeckyll to Hyde but because you have new nails and lip gloss you are a goddess and I am an arsehole cue ‘time to go home ladies and gentlemen’.
Now whilst I am on the subject of the delights of women, after pinging a number of late, let me assist with some basic etiquette that they are clearly not teaching at school anymore:
You are not a bloke: Equality is an amazing thing but you neither punch nor take a punch like a bloke so please don’t try. If you want to swing a punch at me that has a greater than 70% chance of hitting its target then you are fighting like a man so do not be surprised that I pull back for a shot. I doubt that I will take the shot but that is because I have been conditioned not to and not because you don’t deserve it.
You should only need to get thrown out once: Just because society frowns on me rucking with you does not mean that you are entitled to keep trying your luck. You are neither funny nor entertaining you are simply demonstrating that you are ill-equipped to deal with the social life that you want. History tells us that a person has never been allowed to return to a premises from which they have been ejected on the grounds of their perseverance, go home.
Lets be clear – you are getting off easy: You will be ‘escorted’ or ‘guided’ because, you have breasts, we have to ensure that you smell flowers and perfume on the way out of the door rather than getting a face full of gravel like Gary from Burnley. It would be nice if you could reciprocate this status by acting in some way feminine rather than turning into Attila the Hun but I wont hold out any hope. In fairness though at least the scratches come from elegantly manicured talons and we generally smell quite perfumed at the end of the process.
No it doesn’t and no I am not: No I do not feel like more of a man because I am throwing you out, far from it I actually think you are way less of a lady. No I am not manhandling you I am removing you from my premises and you are trying to make the job overly difficult. Do I enjoy guiding Miss Heffer from the premises? no of course I don’t, even less so because of how bloody hard she makes it!
Throwing a woman out is one of the curses of this trade. Chucking a grown adult out is never gonna be an enjoyable task nor one that we would ordinarily hunt out but women are the pits.
Could I kindly ask that before you yell at somebody about the way that they are treating you as a lady you pause to review your actions and ponder the question whether you are in fact acting like one.