A Few Moments with a Regular
Walking into my job on Tuesday rarely felt auspicious. Whereas from Thursday to Sunday the parking lot usually had no more space by 4pm, on Tuesday I usually had my pick instead of having to park down the street near the tattoo parlor and sprint across a street due to a lack of crosswalks.
I took my time walking into the bar. I could always tell how fast I needed to clock in based on what I heard from the outside, and today the silence told me that I had time to hit the restroom, grab a snack from the cooks, and chit-chat with my boss for a second. Dead, apparently. The morning bartender, a sweaty man-bun type who usually clocks out and spends 3 more hours drinking at the bar he just worked at, obviously had a slow day and did not wish to stick around. He offers me $30 to stock for him and within 5 minutes he’s gone without a trace. I’m alone for a second, looking around at our 20 seat bar, completely unoccupied and shiny, a rare sight.
There was no rush to execute the shift change, which usually involved stocking the juices and garnish, both full, and making sure the TV’s are tuned into the appropriate program, nothing interesting on today.
I stood up from stocking the lower cupboard, and there he was. I didn’t hear him come in but he usually rolled in silence, and he hadn’t changed his clothes from the day before. Not really surprising, though.
“Hey Robbie, what’s going on?”
Standard greeting. Slow days always allowed for more small talk.
“I was so bored at work, so I left like 3 hours early but the Med was dead, bro.”
He’s a gate attendant at the state parks. I’m not sure how smart it is to leave work that early, because his job is to give out passes that prevent one from getting a $300 ticket from the ranger, oh well. The Med, for some context, is the dive bar in our small town, and it wasn’t surprising to me that it was dead at 4:30 on a Tuesday, although he seemed pretty bummed.
“Ah shoot, well there’s not exactly a line out the door here, either. What are you thirsty for?”
Vodka strawberry lemonade. The usual. One thing I always respected about him is that he never subscribed to the idea that all men must drink beer and whisky. He always had to fiercely defend his drink choice in front of others who think that drinking straight gasoline water is a prerequisite to being a member of the male sex.
“Are the A’s on today?”
Whenever he starts talking about the Oakland A’s, our shared favorite baseball team, it gives me the signal that we’re about to have the same conversation that we have every time he walks through those doors. The A’s need a new stadium, they need a new owner, they have a bad bullpen. I play along, and honestly, it’s a nicer conversation than the ones I must regulate surrounding COVID, Q-anon conspiracies, and proper ways to weld (which has somehow turned into an argument before). One thing I liked about Robbie, for whom I’m using a different name, is that Robbie never made excuses for himself. I had gotten used to people always saying that they’re here only for one or two, which always turns into five. They’ll order food after three hours in order to act like that was their intention the whole time, or they’ll offer to buy people more drinks to prevent them from leaving, so they don’t have to be alone in their inebriation.
Robbie just wanted to ignore things for a while, that’s all, and I understood. We chilled out in silence for a while, watching a surf competition. When the other bartender walked in, he brought the party with him. One of our coworkers had her birthday that day, and he drove her and a few of her friends from brunch to our bar, thus prompting me to crack open my energy drink, and starting my shift for real.
I’d be back to make Robbie more vodka strawberry lemonade throughout the night, as he kept to himself watching baseball with his hoodie up, and then he’d be gone, and there would be $50 in cash where he sat. His seat would be taken in about 10 seconds. He probably went to the Med, and we’d see him tomorrow.
