I'm a bartender!

Why didn't I think of this before? I talked to Kelly, the cool bartender at The Smoke, and she said she wouldn't mind some help. They pay is just minimum wage, but tips on the weekends are pretty healthy, especially if I wear "something tight." Fair enough, I get the picture.

After they closed on Saturday she showed me how to shut the place down for the night, and taught me a few tips about dealing with typical bar problems (The Smoke is a dirty working-class bar and things can get rough). There's mace on the shelf under the register, and a crowbar if that doesn't work. There's also an emergency switch for if a brawl is brewing, which immediately switches the jukebox to "Free Bird." Apparently the opening refrain helps grease monkeys and rednecks recognize each other's inherent humanity, or something like that.

I suppose the worst part is swabbing the bathrooms. The women's room is pretty typical, usually just cigarettes and sometimes a little barf in the sink. The men's room is more like the high-fiber primate house at the zoo. There's a powerful showerhead/disinfectant system in the ceiling, so you just shut the door and flip the hidden switch that turns it on. Sometimes, though, the guys get feces on the tops of the showerheads themselves and you have to hit those with a sponge, which is pretty nasty.

I'm starting on Tuesday, a slow night, so we'll see how it goes. Hopefully Beef won't show up in his Mountie outfit.