Cat Killer

S0… let me ask you a question. I can’t tell you how many times I hear that a night. If only a nickel would somehow magically manifest on the bar every time a patron muttered these words. This is a constantly repeating social phenomena bartenders have to endure. Nearly every customer that sits down, believes in exchange for a couple of dollars in gratuity and a seat at the bar, they are somehow entitled not only hear the résumé of your life, but they get to treat you as a bartending Google. It’s always the same scenario. The second you serve them a cocktail, they open fire with a machine gun loaded with questions. Basically the same ones every single night, but from different people. Talk about groundhog day. I wish I could make an audio tape of all the answers and just set it down in front of customers with itchy trigger fingers. After years of redundantly and truthfully answering the same questions, I now choose to lie my ass off instead. It helps to keep me entertained and somewhat sane at work. For example, if someone asks me where I am from, they might just receive a story about how my eccentric parents raised me in a remote Indonesian jungle treehouse and we actually had a chimpanzee for a maid. With that being said, as Jake and I tended bar tonight, I discovered he apparently had an answer of his own for the questionnaire. A young woman sat down at our bar and ordered a Tuaca lemon drop. The moment Jake set the martini on her cocktail napkin, she began to ask him a dreaded question. He rudely stopped her mid sentence and before she could get another word out, requested if he could ask his own question. She gave him a puzzled expression in return. He quickly asked her what the capital of Cuba was. The brute sarcastic remark hit home with her, she quickly abandoned her bar stool, and Jake smiled over at me satisfied with the outcome of his desolate sense of humor. I have to admit, I did not see that one coming. Thankfully, we don’t pool our tips.