So today I am making a cocktail, a Screaming Orgasm if you must know, and carefully plopping the cream on top with nothing less than my usual haste. One of the locals interrupts me. ‘Take your time’ he says, and I give him a look that is supposed to say ‘I’ll be with you shortly sir but surely you can appreciate that this is one of the drinks we serve and if someone asks for it then I have no choice but to make it up’. In fact it probably says ‘argghh, give me a break’, but who’s counting. I serve the customers who were there before him, subjecting myself to the expected torrent of sarcasm and anger. When I finally get around to pouring out his John Smiths it is clear that he is drunk. His words are slurring and he is just plain cross. I engage in a playful little debate, not our first, in which I explain how one has to wait in queues from time to time when one is in a bar. My half falls on deaf ears. Fair’s fair though, his half does as well.
An hour or so passes before he tries to order again; this time I refuse because he had been abusive before and was obviously still drunk enough to have difficulty staying awake. As I expected (and secretly hoped) he flies off the handle. The usual garbage ensues and he winds himself into a fury by asking me incredulously and repeatedly ‘me? You’re refusing to serve me?’ He says he’s fine. He’s not.
Then two unexpected things happen. First off he tells me his brother died this morning. I feel guilty but stick to my guns. Getting drunk and argumentative is hardly the most respectful way to honour your sibling’s life but I do feel sorry for the guy. Anyway my deputy manager Carl stepped in and backed me up all the way so I felt more as though I’d made the right decision.
The second unexpected thing happened when he’d finally been persuaded we weren’t going to serve him. He started to fit. The sound of a scraping chair and a dull thud as he hits the floor and shakes violently against the hard wood. The man has worked himself into such a temper that he has brought on the epilepsy which I later discover the management knew about. It’s out of my hands, Carl is talking to some young men who are helping the man. An ambulance is called. He comes out of the fit. Shouts more abuse, starts fitting again. The people he was with order more drinks and tell me they don’t really know him that well: ‘It’s nothing to do with me, I’ve got my own problems, know what I mean?’
People stare but don’t do anything. They buy drinks. The ambulance arrives and he gets carted out to much relief.
When they don’t have family, when they have no need to go to the NHS, when Social Services can’t help them, that’s when they end up with us, and really, by giving them what they want (and would only obtain elsewhere) we only make the problems worse.