What it’s like to be a bartender

Telling a Customer They Smell Like S***

Insignificant Restaurant Worker

“Hey Oscar, do me a favour?”

“Busy. What’s up?” “Just go up to the bar and pour a Bud Light.” “Piss off. You go up to the bar and pour a Bud Light. I have a twenty in the back.” “I really think you need to pour this Bud Light. Please?”

Servers beg. They beg to switch shifts, they beg to be cut first, they beg for better sections, they beg for kitchen scraps, and they beg not to serve the loser at Table 14 who can’t get enough of his own dirty knock-knock jokes. Twenty percent of a server’s time is spent begging managers, fellow servers, and the Holy Lord Himself to just let this shift be OKAY.

But this server never begs. She doesn’t fall behind either, and she’s been pouring her own pints all afternoon. Someone is trying to make a fool of me, but I’m too much of a fool to figure out how.

I step behind the bar, expecting the Bud Light tap to explode the second I yank it back. I’ll be soaked in beer, the regulars will laugh, some miscreant will yell ‘April Fools!’ even though it’s fucking July, and then, sticky and smelling like Demi Levato, I’ll have to serve twenty impatient bikers in the backroom.

Before I even get a chance to pour the pint, the nostril assault begins. It’s as if I’ve cracked open an ancient sewer grate, where the smell of sixteenth-century feces has been festering for the last five hundred years. My eyes water immediately. I want to yak, but throwing up behind the bar can really put a patron off his pulled pork sandwich.

I’m a professional. I keep my poise.

How bad is it? Let me tell you a little secret. My nose doesn’t work. Once upon a time, I could smell with the best of them; then I spent eight years sucking cocaine up my nasal cavity until all the good smells of this earth evaporated. Bake me a batch of sweet rolls and I might get a hint of cinnamon if I shove my head in the oven. Otherwise, the only perfumes left for this schnoz of mine are farts and dumpster fires.

If this reek is making me cry, it means we’re dealing with an apex effluvium. A wet dog has rolled in a dead whale carcass. A skunk has drowned in a septic tank.

I’m standing in a stink cloud, and I can’t let it show. Not until I discover the source of this unholy reek, praying all the while that it isn’t an egregious health code violation. One rigormortified dead rat beneath a barstool gets posted to Instagram and I might as well cut my tips in half for the rest of the summer.

Rumours close restaurants. I keep my poker face, pour the pint, and scurry back to the kitchen. “What is that smell?”

“Right? Isn’t that the worst thing you’ve ever smelled in your life?” the server says.

“Is it the tap drain?”

“No no no,” she says. “It’s that guy.”

I look through the pass window. There’s a man wearing rubber boots and a lumberjack jacket sitting in front of the Bud Light tap. He has half the bar entirely to himself. The other half is packed with regulars; ten bodies playing musical chairs with eight bar stools. Some of those regulars can’t stand each other, but they’d rather sit beside an asshole than sit beside someone who smells like one.

“That can’t be coming from a human.”

“Trust me, it’s him. It started the second he sat down. He’s a farmer.”

“How do you know he’s a farmer?”

“Because he smells like he’s been waist-deep in pig droppings all day. What do we do?”

How do you tell a customer they smell like shit?

If you work in the hospitality industry, your job is to be nice to people, even if those people are scoundrels. There are dozens of racists, narcissists, philanderers, thieves, cheats, and mooches who steal from Salvation Army bins, and all of them think that I’m their best friend. I’m paid to be a welcoming motherfucker, and a bartender truly earns his money when he welcomes those who are unwelcome everywhere else.

If I were the only one basking in this farmer’s stink, I’d happily leave him to nurse his pint in peace. Unfortunately, there are two dozen other noses connected to two dozen other wallets that I have to worry about.

I’m locked in a server’s Sophie’s choice: do I tell the friendly stranger he smells bad, or keep my mouth shut and have a dozen of my best customers scuttle off to some better-smelling bar?

He’s finishing his beer. Please God, let him settle his bill and leave.

See what I mean about begging?

“All finished up?” I ask the farmer.

“Maybe I’ll have another one. I like it here.”

He likes it here. There is no God. I can see the regulars rolling their eyes, whispering the name of an establishment down the street. I have to say something, but what do I say?

Sorry sir, I’d be happy to serve you another pint, but I’m afraid I have to ask you to take your clothes off and step inside our dishwasher for a rinse cycle or two. Standard policy.

Nope.

Have you been to our patio yet? I know it’s raining, but there’s really nothing so invigorating as a pint in a rainstorm is there?

Nope.

I don’t know if you’re aware, but you smell bad. Really bad. It’s actually hard to be around you. Is there any way we can put a stop to it?

That’s as close as I’m going to get. Wish me luck.

“It smells like shit in here.”

I didn’t say it. The Blunt Cunt said it.

The Blunt Cunt lives one street behind the bar. She graces us with her presence every single day. She’s not a nice person. She’s not smart, or considerate of others, or blessed with any notable talents, but she’s as straightforward as a four-year-old, and occasionally I find her utter lack of tact charming.

The Blunt Cunt has plopped into her usual seat, only six feet from the farmer, and she’s noticed the smell.

“Seriously, does anybody else smell that? Oh my god, it’s awful. Is that your sandwich?” The Blunt Cunt hovers her head over a regular’s plate, taking a big whiff of his pulled pork. “No. That’s fine. I think it’s coming from over there.”

The farmer is watching Blue Jays highlights, pretending his ears don’t work, but the Blunt Cunt won’t be ignored. She’s stalking across the bar like a bloodhound, sniffing out the source of the foul odor. The farmer shifts in his seat as the Blunt Cunt closes in.

“Hey, did you fart?”

“You know I think I will take my bill,” the farmer says. The server already has his bill in her hand. In one swift motion, the farmer pulls out his credit card, taps, chugs, and moves for the exit. “See you again!”

“God, I hope not,” the Blunt Cunt says.

“Have a great day, thanks for coming in!” the server says, her nose wedged into her collar. As the door closes the bar exhales. The daily miseries of life that beset our regulars before they walked in are long forgotten in a wave of relief. Their pints have never tasted better. The musk of spilled beer has never smelled so sweet.

Today’s little truth: A blunt cunt occasionally comes in handy.

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