control without causing injury.
I work as the manager, bartender, and bouncer of a small restaurant and lounge in the little town of Westerose, Alberta (Canada). In my time, I’ve had to deal with my share of hostile encounters, but this particular incident ranks as probably the funniest one I’ve ever experienced.
First, some background. Shortly after our restaurant opened, I hired a new bartender named ‘Fred’ (all names have been changed to protect the idiotic; it is, after all, a small town). I fired him after the first day for drinking on the job. As it turns out, he’s the town drunk, which just goes to show what happens when you’re new to the area and don’t know people yet. Despite firing him, I liked the guy—he’s warm, friendly, and funny and really is a kick-ass bartender. I had no problems with having him and his friend Dean in the lounge for drinks virtually every night.
The thing is I worried about his heavy drinking. He’s one of those guys who seems perfectly normal for a certain amount of drinks, and then descends quickly into total inebriation. It’s awfully hard to determine a cutoff point for him. One moment he’s fine, the next he’s sliding down the walls.
Well, that night I’d had enough, so I cut him off and ordered his waitress not to serve him any more drinks. He became surly and abusive. I tolerated his attitude for a little while and tried to mollify him, but eventually I gave up, banned him from the bar, and ejected him. He began threatening me physically, but his buddy got him out the door and off the premises. End of story. Or so I thought.
Fred decided I had ‘called him out,’ so he lumbered around to the kitchen entrance to confront me. One problem: I wasn’t there. But, half the kitchen staff was. I had no interest at all in dealing with him, so I didn’t bother to go out. What would be the point? I knew that my presence would only inflame the situation so I let those guys deal with it. His buddy Dean finally wrangled him away from the door and led him back to the front entrance where they got into an argument about their treatment with Greg, the restaurant owner.
Greg was arguing right back… bad idea. You don’t argue with patrons, ever, especially not drunk patrons you’ve just kicked out. Finally, after a few minutes, I knew that I had to intervene. I went out into the lobby and said, “No more arguing. You were abusive. I banned you. This is your tab, you signed it. End of story.” Surprisingly, it was—they grumbled and left. Last I saw of Fred, he was winding his way through the nearly empty parking lot towards home.
Not all encounters are deadly. In fact, a few can even be downright comical. Wrangling drunks can often be a good example, though you still have to take such incidents seriously.
Once he was gone, I took a few minutes to calm everyone down. Ejecting Fred was high entertainment for the yahoos in the lounge. Things quickly returned to normal. After about half an hour, I stepped out the kitchen entrance for a smoke, lit up, looked up… and here comes Fred!!!
The bugger had waited by the corner of the Laundromat in order to ambush me. As soon as I stepped out the door, he charged…
And charged…
And charged…
Er… perhaps I’d better explain. It wasn’t exactly the best-planned ambush in the history of warfare. The Laundromat was over a hundred meters (328 feet) away from me. I looked up, saw him approach, said “Oh, for God’s sake!” and waited. And waited… I tried placating him as he approached; tried calming him down but no dice. Fred was on the warpath, the blood singing in his veins, screaming his terrible war chant, “Hey motherf%&ker you think you’re so bad! Come on motherf%&ker I’ll do ya, I’ll do ya, I’ll do ya…” Et cetera…
The mighty clash of two forces colliding sounded rather a lot like a feather pillow hitting a concrete wall which is… well… more or less what happened. He pushed his chest into me. I turned him around and pushed him away, hoping he’d get the idea. He came back flailing, but I held him at arms length so he couldn’t reach me.
Finally, he tried to kick me, which didn’t exactly have the desired outcome either. I pushed down on his shoulders and swept his supporting leg, dropping him gently enough that he wouldn’t get hurt on landing. He wound up upside down on his head, legs wrapped around my right leg, with me cradling his ankles with my right arm to keep him from kicking me.
“Hey motherf%&ker you think you’re so bad! Come on motherf%&ker I’ll do ya, I’ll do ya, I’ll do ya…”
We were against the stucco wall, unfortunately out of view of the windows, so I was forced to walk backwards about 3 meters (10 feet) to get help—step, drag Fred. Step, draaaaag Fred…
“Hey motherf%&ker you think you’re so bad! Come on motherf%&ker I’ll do ya, I’ll do ya, I’ll do ya…”
I tapped on the window until I got a response and one of the lounge patrons—ironically, one I’d already tossed in the past—wandered out to have a look. He stopped for a moment to stare at the ridiculous scene. Fred was still on his head, wriggling around like a worm on a hook and screaming bloody vengeance.
“Hey motherf%&ker you think you’re so bad! Come on motherf%&ker I’ll do ya, I’ll do ya, I’ll do ya…”
I calmly said, “James, do me a favour would you? Could you please go inside and get Greg and Dean? Thanks.”
“Hey motherf%&ker you think you’re so bad! Come on motherf%&ker I’ll do ya, I’ll do ya,
I’ll do ya…”
“Oh, shut up.”
So, after a few more minutes Dean and Greg came out and they too had to stop to take in the weird tableau. By this time, I’d lit another cigarette with my free hand and was worrying about what Fred’s muddy work boots were doing to my nice black satin shirt. Finally using Greg’s strength and Dean’s persuasion, they unwrapped the mighty warrior from around my leg. I stepped back, and after a certain amount of struggling and cussing, they got him bundled into a car and drove him off home again.
At that moment, all I could do was shake my head and remark, “I think I just got attacked by the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man,” at which point everyone within earshot rolled over laughing. I shrugged, ordered my people back into the restaurant, poured myself a root beer, and began writing my incident report. End of story again.
Or not. Yup, he came back again. He walked the whole two kilometers (approximately 1? miles) from his house to visit more mighty destruction upon me. I just rolled my eyes and kept watching the basketball game on television.
Shortly after Fred arrived, his father, a frail-looking old man, came roaring up in his Dodge Caravan, jumped out, grabbed Fred, and gave him what I hadn’t at any point—a full-power clobber to the chin—much to the delight of all onlookers. Well, THAT finally took the fight out of him for real. He was bundled, again, into the car and taken away—this time for good.
While my diplomatic skills are good, I don’t have a lot of experience negotiating with ambassadors from planet Tequila. Drunks, even ones with all the power and grace of an anemic octopus, can be difficult to control without causing injury, at least to one with my limited experience. While I had all sorts of nasty ways of finishing the encounter earlier if I’d wished, all I wanted to do was hold him in one place until the ‘cavalry’ arrived. I didn’t want to take the chance and hurt him accidentally. All, in all, it turned out they way you want these things to, with little injury and peace quickly restored.
You will undoubtedly recognize several themes in this story that we’ve covered previously, such as using good situational awareness, avoiding ambushes, knowing that most attacks occur in fringe areas like parking lots, taking revenge, staking one’s territory, and so on. While it is a good refresher on these subjects, we’ll focus on handling drunks effectively rather than rehashing old material.
Effects of Alcohol
