Douchey Bar Custy Tells Graduate School Bartender She Will Never Amount To Anything

Longtime reader, occasional commenter, first time poster.  Just call me The Educated Bartender- the story of how this name came to be is as follows:

Everyone has their one big pet peeve when dealing with customers.  Mine?  Customers who think they know me, know my life, know my story, etc.  I started bartending over 4 years ago, when I was 20 and still in undergrad at college.  Since then, I’ve finished my double major, and have moved on to grad school.  In order to get a competitive job in my field (communications) you need a lot of experience – so I figured I would stick to my bartending job on the side so I can pay for my classes, do a few internships, and pack my resume so once I graduate it will actually garner attention.

Because I’m trying to do so many things at once, I have been taking classes part time, so now I am 24, have one class left, and am still bartending 3-5 nights a week.  I work at two different locations right now –a dance club with a capacity of over 1,000 people, and the other is a small hole in the wall beer bar.  Needless to say, I get an interesting range of customers.

At the bigger club, I usually get guys who tell me I am too pretty to be working so hard and I should settle down and find a sugar daddy.  Or ones telling me that my looks won’t last forever so I should really “go back to school”.  It’s pretty easy to shut those down and move on to the next customer.  But at the little bar, it isn’t so easy, and this is what prompted me to finally post.

Recently I had an older gentleman come into the bar.  He was my only customer, so I couldn’t get away.  During the course of our conversation, he was talking about himself, and said to me, “yes, I went to law school – I’m sure you didn’t even finish college considering you’re just a bartender”. 

I corrected him explaining that I’m currently in graduate school (at which point he also said that communications isn’t a “real” job and all advertising content – my specific area of work - lacks creativity so I really do nothing with my life, but I digress).  I explained that by bartending I’ve had the opportunity to pay for my classes as I go instead of taking out loans, paid off my car, and even just bought my own condo and can afford my monthly mortgage payments. 

He continued to say that I was probably going to be stuck in a dead-end bartending job my entire life, and should probably pick up a drunk off the street to marry so I can get tax discounts and have a man in my life to take care of me – also telling me that I wasn’t that pretty so I should snag one while they’re drunk. 

Luckily before I could throw a beer bottle at him, a couple of my friends came in as backup.

So my question is this: Have any of you experienced something similar?  And is there any way to win with some of these customers?!

--The Educated Bartender

 

Comments

[perky]

Those are the sort of guys you stay the hell away from. "Hey sweetie, you are such a good for nothing looser that I'm the best you'll ever get so snap me up quick" There is no way to win with those sort. Just ignore them as much as possible and never believe anything they say. They are not worth the breath it takes to dispute their points.

[LadyBelle]

It sounds like he was really insecure and had a fragile ego. Notice he said he went to law school, not that he was a lawyer. So basically the fact you are in graduate school, and pointed out you didn't have debts, were a home owner, and ect at a much younger age then him, it made his insecurities even worse. To top it all, you are a woman, a gender who he's convinced himself is not that bright since none of them will have a relationship with him. Not being able to argue with anything great in his pathetic life, he resorted to the drunken adult equivalent of "you're a stinky poo-poo head." Basically trying to say you weren't attractive enough to meet his soooo high standards, and that's why he wasn't going to try hitting on you, not the fact he realized you were way out of his league and he was a pathetic, lonely, old man.

[Bug]

That sucks monkey balls. I think everyone has had an experience like that...One time I had a woman come up to my counter and say, "No wonder this place is slow, they have people like YOU working here." As for your guy, I bet my bottom dollar that hes never done shit with that law degree and the only way to feel big is to tear down a person who isn't in the position to fight back. I hate that he dissed the Communications field though....As a fellow communications major I strongly desire to kick him in the teeth.

[NC Tony]

He sounds like the kind of guy who will always come up with some stupid argument to shoot down whatever argument you offer up. So really there's nothing you can do except just know that's he's wrong, has probably never done anything worthwhile in his life, and you'll eventually be going on to bigger and better things. Just give him a "Yeah, whatever." and act like what he's saying has no effect on you. People like him say shit like that to get a rise out of people, if you don't react it takes all the wind out of their sails, leaving them with nothing more to say since they're not getting a reaction.

Or you could let him talk and just cross your arms fix him with your best "if it wasn't illegal, I'd kill you where you stand" stare.

[NC Tony]

BTW, if he's so much better than you, what is he doing in a little hole in the wall bar?

[McDeli]

He's an insecure tool. As mentioned by LadyBelle, he said he went to law school but doesn't mention practicing law- he's unsuccessful, you are. He just wants to make himself feel better by trying to belittle you.

I had a similar story happen to me in August. I'm working on my English degree, and some guy I was serving laughed and said "So, you're going to be starving after you finish your degree!"
I didn't say anything. I just sneered at him.

[Red Rider]

I'm a psych major, so I get that sort of dismissal a lot. (I'm studying social psychology so that I can go into social work with the homeless, focusing on those suffering from mental illnesses). I've had customers who were making small-talk scoff in my face and roll their eyes when I mention my major, and then tell me I won't amount to anything. It's rude, but there's really not much that you can do about for fear of losing your job.

[RoxyRocketeer]

Start quoting poetry. "What have you done, with your one wild and precious life?" "Are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?" And so on.

[Tanz]

Yeah, I had an experience like that when I was 16 and working as a checkout chick (part time after school job, I was still at high school). The town I grew up in was a university town and a lot of these kids felt they were better than everyone around them.

One day I had a group of 3 guys come through my checkout. One in particular started on about how I was going nowhere in this dead end job (I looked older than I was, and most people assumed I worked there full time) and how *he* was going up in the world - look, here he was studying hard at the Local University! So i asked what he was studying. 'Economics" he replied, shooting a pitying look my way.

But what he didn't know - and I did - was that the 6th form economics curriculum (which I was currently studying) was the same as the first year University economics course. So I brightly asked him what he thought about a particular theory we'd covered in class last week.

He went bright red and stammered "Um.... we haven't covered that yet..." so I proceeded to give him a one-on-one tutorial of the salient points, as his friends laughed their arses off at him. Jerk.

My advice; make them look like an idiot while you are all innocent and smiley. Works a charm every time ;)

[Less Than Zero]

My favourite has always been people who tell me I should do a favour for them -- my side-job outside of retail is as a performer -- in being in their music video, show, whatever for free, because my real job is to look pretty and find a man to take care of me so that I can keep doing shitty jobs like that for free for them.

I absolutely always quote people like that at least double what I would quote anyone else for the pleasure of my time. I'm too booked to take bookings I don't want to begin with, generally.

[ObeeKris]

It's amazing how economics work in situations like that. If you're the only bartender and he's the only customer, how long do you think he'll stick around if he's being charged $10-$15 for a bottle of Budweiser? If he complains, agree you did the math wrong, and say it's now $20. That should shut him up real quick.

[Skittles]

People like that are a pain in the ass, I have always dealt with that by not giving half a fuck for other peoples opinions of me. It's not that I don't respect other people it's just that they can't possibly know me fully so their opinions about me, shouldn't matter to me. It's not easy at first, but it gets easier over time.

[TheCheerfulTreeRat]

The best revenge? Live a good life.

[ScanGunMonkey]

Punch him in his ignorant face. THE MIGHTY THROGNAR COMMANDS IT!

[www.needrapidcash.com]

I am a member of a somewhat charismatic Christian church. I did not grow up in a 'churched' family so the unstructured nature of that kind of that type of church appealled to me.