Flash in the Pan by David Blum

Author:David Blum
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

NINETEEN

* * *

There were at least two surreptitiously observed scenarios that got Billy, the bartender, fired this morning for stealing.

The bar-is-closed, here’s-your-drink-anyway scenario:

A guy comes in for a drink. The bar is closed. The register is closed.

The money is put away. The guy says, “Look, give me a drink.” He puts a $10 bill on the bar. Billy gives him the drink. He takes the ten spot. Stuffs it into his pocket.

The free-drink, big-tip scenario:

Two people come in. Together. One is a bartender somewhere else. One isn’t. They order some drinks. One of the guys—the one who was, as Bruce put it later, “not a bartender, not related to the place in any way, shape or form”—says, “Oh, how much do I owe you?” And Billy says, “Oh, I’ll take care of it.” So the guy leaves him a $20 bill and he walks out the door and he pockets the money.

Both scenarios are observed by an outside detective agency hired by Bruce to monitor the bar. Bruce has suspected that someone behind the bar, possibly Billy, was stealing. He had no concrete evidence for this. Nevertheless, he believed it was true, and he went ahead and hired these outside detectives—called “spotters”—to come by and check out the scene. Their report identified Billy as a crook, and Bruce had no choice. He called his manager, Michael Fitzpatrick, and told him to call Billy and fire him.

“You have to look at stealing in different ways,” Bruce says moments after setting his dismissal in motion. He is anxious to justify an action that he knows might make him look like the Big Bad Boss. He has fired plenty of people already, but this is one of the first to be fired for cause. So he figures there’d better be one, and it probably better be good.

“Either it’s just totally criminal, which I don’t think in this case it is, it’s neglect, or lack of caring, or greedy. I think it just comes down to greed in a certain way. Whether it’s criminal or not I’m not even interested in. Unless someone’s actually stealing. But you have aspects of it like—someone comes in, you buy them a drink, it’s busy—and the two people you’ve bought a drink for are sitting at my barstools for an hour or two, they haven’t paid for a goddamn thing and they leave you [the bartender] a $20 tip.

“I would call that, in my book, stealing.” Bruce pauses to see how that plays. He has finally labeled Billy’s behavior a felony. Is that what he meant to say? He will be cautious now. “If I had to go before a judge he might not consider it that.” So what did he do exactly? “It’s more of a house rule than anything else.”

Hmmmm. Billy must have left his Falls house rulebook in his other pants.

The likelihood that a bartender is ripping off his employer is real. Ask any bartender you happen to meet. This is one of the few universal rules of restaurants.

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