Lost and Found by Jamey Glasnovic

Author:Jamey Glasnovic
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-77160-052-1
Publisher: Rocky Mountain Books
Published: 2014-10-06T16:00:00+00:00

10.

THE AUBURN ROSE WEST COAST GRILL

OR, JOEY AND PONCHO’S ALE HOUSE,

POOL PUB & GOLF COURSE

A.K.A. EVERY BAR I’VE EVER WORKED AT

Downtown there’s a parade, but I don’t think I wanna go.

—The Tragically Hip

The lost horizons I can see, are filled with bars and factories

And in them all we fight to stay awake.

—Gin Blossoms

“Come on, you dumb hillbilly bastard, quit pussyfooting around and hit him already.”

For years I’ve been racking my brain trying to find the right sentence to encapsulate the experience of working in a bar, and the oratorical gem from above is as good as any I can come up with. I’ve worked in food and beverage off and on for as long as I care to remember, and when people ask me what I do for a living I am reluctant to admit what has become my everyday reality, which is that I’m a service industry lifer. Lately I am reminded of an old joke: father number one says, “My son is an actor in New York,” and father number two says, “Oh really, what restaurant?” In my case you can substitute “writer” or “photographer” for “actor,” and “pub” for “restaurant,” but the sentiment is the same. I doubt there’s anywhere else in the employment world where a vocation with so much opportunity still amounts to a dead end.

Not that it’s such a bad life, on the face of it. Flexible hours have always been one of my favourite perks, and you are seldom confined to one place. If you don’t like the way things are going, you can just walk down the street and get another job – often on the same day, during the summer months. In fact, after acquiring a few of the basic skills, you can work just about anywhere in the world as a waiter or bartender. If you happen to find the right niche, the money can be very good, and you have cash in hand every day. If you add the inherent social aspect of the job and the undeniable fun factor of working where everyone else goes to party, then I admit, sometimes it’s the greatest job on earth.

Despite all these perks, however, working in a busy pub can also be a trying experience. The late nights, the long hours, and the inevitable drunken buffoons can slowly grind away at your will to live, creating an uneasy balance between the life you want and what you have to do to make a living. One night recently, this was my welcoming committee: a big, lumbering tradesman sitting at the bar with a friend, watching three-round amateur boxing on TV and spewing minor-league racial epithets, at considerable volume.

“Come on, you big Negro, knock that white boy the fuck out.”

I notice that this guy is careful not to use the “other N-word,” but he does take everything right to the jagged edge. You see, my redneck is not choosing sides in the televised fight playing out on multiple screens around the room; he just likes the sound of his own voice.

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