'Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving

[infinite monkey]

I was remembering my bartending days.

Because it's Thanksgiving Eve, and everybody comes back to this smallish town. Most get in the night before, and are ready to go out to the bar to see everyone.

The particular bar where I worked was THE spot to find your friends. Old people, younger people, in the middle people.

T-Eve is completely insane. The owner has since bought a bigger place, but back then we didn't have a ton of space. People would pile in and pile on. You couldn't wait tables in any sort of normal fashion. At the bar everyone was yelling for another round. To take a pizza to a table you had to hold it WAY over your head (so we went ahead and boxed them) and inch through the bodies.

Piles and piles of garbage bags were being taken out back. There would be piles and piles more when everyone was gone and we could actually get somewhere to start cleaning up.

We'd take a look around and say things like "fuck man!" and "Oh. My. God." and "we sure banked on tips tonight!"

And bank we did. I remember getting about 250 one time. Keep in mind we split tips. And every available hand was on deck, even non-usual emiployees. If you got stuck cooking or waiting tables or bartending or back bar or whatever it was, you got an equal share of the tips. Not fair for the person stuck in the kitchen to get nada, or even a percentage. We'd done it that way since the previous owner and it always worked out well for everyone. If someone came on shift or got off shift we split what was there at the time and started over.

Before we cleaned, we all sat at the bar and got whatever the hell we wanted, to drink. We were like jelly people. People started counting out the tips, and some wandered off and started throwing trash away.

There was still so much to be done, but it was euphoric. Our adrenaline had been running high all night. There was a comaraderie as we had our drinks before tackling the mess. Stories about the night.

I worked with a great fun bunch of people. We worked our asses off sometimes, and had a great time doing it.

I miss bartending sometimes. I liked talking to the customers, making them laugh. I liked being very good at it, having acute perception and quick moves.

So I suppose that this happens in a lot of places. I guess the smaller towns might notice it more.

Do any of you do that, is it a tradition to go on the town the night before Thanksgiving?

Thanks for indulging me. Those were good times.