The Clientele Freak Show

Booger recipe
1/2 oz Malibu® coconut rum
1/2 oz banana liqueur
1/2 oz melon liqueur
1/4 oz Bailey's® Irish cream

After the first 1/2 oz, drop just a tiny bit of Bailey's on top.

From nut jobs to people who have nothing better to do than to drown their liver in alcohol, my bar sees it all. One guy puts in a longer shift than I do in a single night juggling beer after beer while another just sits there with a To Catch a Predator look smothered on his face(like those psycho clowns that people of all ages are weary of), waiting for some 14 year old girl he met on the internet to meet him there. At times I look up and scream, God save me from this awful place!

Most of the time I can deal with the creepers and the guys who are slowly killing themselves each time my shift begins, but it's the main act that really makes me want to quit my job on the spot without a 2 weeks notice. I like to call that main act, The Booger, for reasons you'll soon find out. Immediately upon hearing the door alarm and seeing him walk in, my heart sinks. I know that I'll only make a grand total of $1 from The Booger if I'm lucky and I'll also have to deal with a real germy situation. Instantly, he grabs a coffee stirrer and maneuvers it up his nose. Once it reaches his brain and he flinches to take it out, (eyes now watering and nose running), it goes directly into his mouth. I'm secretly cringing on the other side of the bar while he's sucking away at the snot covered stirrer.

Before leaving, he always finds the time to sneeze wildly into his hands and then wipe them on the bar as if it were made of Kleenex material. To give a proper goodbye, The Booger makes sure to shake hands with whoever is surrounding him which I avoid at all costs. Yuck!

Every time, without fail, I want to pick The Booger and flick him as far as I can away from the bar.

DJ O'Douls

Medusa Punch recipe
24 oz Zinfandel® white wine
8 oz peach schnapps
8 oz cranberry juice
1 splash sweet and sour mix

Fill a container (size of an iced-tea pitcher) almost halfway with ice. Fill to slightly above ice with a decent California White Zinfandel. Add one part peach schnapps, and a splash of sour mix. Fill the remaining space (should be a little less than a quarter of the pitcher) with cranberry juice. Seal and shake vigourously. Serve in glasses.

On Friday nights, we have a DJ to entertain the obnoxious people that feel the need to dance like they're in a club at a dive bar. So anyway, he comes in and sets up his shit (a laptop) right in the way of the store register blocking all of the liquor on the shelf. Constantly throughout the night, I am shoving him and every girl that goes up to him to request 90's dance music out of my way to grab a bottle of hennessy or to help the poor old man waiting to get his mega millions ticket.

On top of the not so great music stored on his playlist, he insists on blasting it at the highest volume known to man. Come on dude the last thing I want to do is have to scream to customers to figure out what they want to drink. I can probably name you in order the songs he's going to play too starting with a montage of 80's rock, then some Lil Jon, followed by a reggae block, and finally closing with a Guns n' Roses song which somewhat lifts my spirits. After all that he doesn't even bother to get on his little microphone to shout out the bartenders and to remind everyone to tip us like normal DJ's do. Isn't that part of their job?

Worst of all is that by the end of the night, he packs up at the speed of lightning while I am left to deal with the people who think that there is still music playing and refuse to leave the bar. Oh yea and before he leaves, he gets paid more than what I make in tips all night.

I'd like to serve him up some Medusa Punch, watch him turn to stone, then smash him to pieces along with his equipment.

Dirty Sink Water

Dirty Diaper recipe
1/2 oz vodka
1/2 oz amaretto almond liqueur
1/2 oz Southern Comfort® peach liqueur
1/2 oz Midori® melon liqueur
1/2 oz Chambord® raspberry liqueur
1/2 oz orange juice

Pour equal parts of all ingredients into a shaker filled with ice, and chill, shake, and strain.

Would you like bottle or draft? Psshht here's a hint, I would order a bottle if I were you. When faced with what you think is an innocent question of bottle or draft, it's always safe to go with the bottle in any bar and especially in mine.

Let me break the cleaning process down to you. There are 3 sinks behind the bar. One is filled with warm soapy water, the other with just warm water to rinse the soap off, and the last one (which should never be skipped in the process) is filled with a sanitizer. Normally, this 3 sink routine cleaning is effective in ridding a glass of its contents and germs but, on a late Friday night bartenders tend to get quite lazy. To begin, we leave the third and most important sink, might I add, empty for dumping purposes only. The first and second sink get filled up properly, however, during the 6 hour span of a busy night that water can soon turn from clear to yellow very fast. The soap suds eventually fizzle away and all types of ingredients may accidentally spill into the sink from beer to Cafe Patron to Bailey's giving the water a sort of milky texture. And let me tell you, if we are not in the mood for whatever reason to change that water, your glass is getting washed in it and put back in the freezer for the next time you come in. So for all of you 3am stragglers, I suggest you order up a bottle because you'll be the first to get a taste of the dirty sink water.

And for all those glass drinkers out there, well I pray for you. Us bartenders might as well stir your cocktail with a dirty diaper. It's all the same shit.

Lottery Jam

Liquid Gold recipe
1 oz vodka
1 oz cream
1/2 oz Galliano® herbal liqueur
1/2 oz white creme de cacao

Shake ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice. Strain into a cocktail glass.

On top of bartender and liquor store cashier, I also take on the responsibility of the ever so patient lottery machine operator. For anyone who doesn't play the NJ lottery or who is unfamiliar with it...STAY THAT WAY! The only people who actually play it are senior citizens. So, if you're feeling lucky one day and decide to stop in and buy some tickets, chances are you'll be stuck behind some 70 year old man who has nothing better to do with his money than spend it on $50 worth of Pick 3's and Pick 4's. There's no doubt that you'll be waiting in line for a while.

ATTENTION ALL LOTTERY VIRGINS: PLEASE REMAIN ABSTINENT!

To help those understand the utter aggravation of checking a stack of tickets for winners or punching in every variation of the number 6487; I am about to engage you in a little story. An old nagging woman comes in one day (the type that if you accidentally screw up one of her requests will condemn you to hell to spend an eternity in front of the lottery machine printing out her endless list of numbers)and hands me about five tickets to reprint the same numbers for that night. I obediently fulfill my duty as lottery machine operator and reprint her numbers. When I am done I ask if she needs the old tickets back and as she shakes her head NO, I throw them in the garbage. Just as I think my interaction with this woman is over, she discovers the winning Pick 3 number from the previous night and says that her old ticket was a winner. Annoyed that she didn't point this out before I had disposed of the tickets, I now find my pathetic self rummaging through a garbage full of losing lottery tickets which all look exactly the same.

After about what seemed like a lifetime of garbage picking, I finally find her ticket and scan it through the machine only to find out that it was NOT a winner at all. The old woman (whom I now want to jump over the counter and strangle with my bare hands) looks at me and says, "Oh really? I thought I had the winning number."

Do me a favor. When you're done wasting my time, I suggest you walk over to the bar and order up a pint of liquid gold because that's the closest you're ever going to get to hitting it big and I will personally make sure of that.