Jeff Burkhart: Lowering the bar at the bar
They say it’s a “dry” heat. And they almost always mean that it is somehow better than “wet” heat. All I know is that it’s hot either way. And while wet heat makes your skin shine, when a blast of dry air hits your face, it cracks your lips and dries out your eyes instantly.
The woman sitting at the bar fanned herself incessantly. One wonders if the energy expenditure of such rigorous action offset the results.
“Are you hot?” she asked.
“Of course I’m hot,” I said, leaving out the snarky addition of “I am in a long-sleeved shirt, vest and tie,” which I certainly thought, and thought quite hardly.
I was standing farther from her than I normally would. But many years in the same establishment have taught me where the air conditioner blows most coldly.
Ever notice how you can tell a new restaurant by where the staff congregates? If they stand awkwardly, it means that they haven’t yet learned where to stand. It’s the same with new employees, except that not only do they not know where to stand, they also don’t know how to stand. You learn quickly in the restaurant biz not to stand in doorways, or around blind corners.
And you learn to announce yourself.
“Corner!” said the food runner coming around the corner, carrying food with less enthusiasm than normal.
Wet or dry heat was a distinction that it seemed he didn’t really care about.
“He looks hot,” said the woman fanning.
“Really?” I did not say.
Just then, a man I have never seen before sat down directly in front of me.
“What can I get for you?” I asked.
“Good to see you again,” he said.
Sure, I thought. It’s certainly possible that I have seen him before. I see a lot of people, and have for three decades, so the possibility of not remembering one of them is not lost on me.
“How have you been?” he asked.
“You know, living the dream,” I responded.
“What can I get for you?” I repeated.
“No seriously, is everything going all right in your life?” he asked.
Now that was weird. There’s nothing like someone you don’t know, or don’t recognize, asking you intensely personal questions, in public, at your work.
Over the years, I have had people I don’t know probe me about my family life, my bosses’ family life or even some random acquaintance’s family life.
It’s none of your business. And it’s a weird flex if I don’t know your name, or even your face. And surprisingly, it happens an awful lot.
Luckily for me, he quickly turned to the fanning woman sitting there.
“Good to see you again,” he said to her, reaching out his hand, which was doubly weird — maybe even triply.
She ignored his hand, and his comment, and turned back to me.
“Can’t you do something about this heat?”
“Like what?” again, I did not say.
Instead, I did say, “Let me go check,” and I went into the back for a minute — a very long minute.
“I want to take you to Hawaii,” said the man to the woman immediately upon my return.
She rolled her eyes.
“No, really. You are the most beautiful woman that I have ever seen,” he said.
She wasn’t buying it, thankfully.
From my position, I have seen the cheesiest pickup lines work both ways.
“Come here often?”
Worked.
“What’s your sign?”
Worked.
“Hey, baby. How about it?”
Unfortunately, worked.
It’s like online scams, cold calls and phishing schemes. We don’t like to think that they work, but if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be out there. People are dumber and more gullible than we give them credit for — or sometimes just more desperate.
“Let me buy you some jewelry?” asked the man.
“You’d look good in amethyst,” he added.
I didn’t even know what that meant. But now I was going to have to step in and do something about this. Women need to feel comfortable anywhere that I work. It’s a rule I have lived by from the beginning of my career, and it has served me well.
She got up to leave.
I was too late. Not everything works out the way you want it to. And try as you may, sometimes things slip through the cracks. I blame it on the heat.
“Here’s my card,” she said, handing her business card to the man. “Call me sometime.”
Leaving me with these thoughts:
• When just one person lowers the bar on bad behavior, it lowers the bar for all of the rest of us, too.
• “Behavior is what a man does, not what he thinks, feels or believes,” once wrote Emily Dickinson.
• And that is just as true for a woman, too, says this writer.
• People will treat you the way you allow them to treat you.
• Is it low lying fruit? Or low laying fruit? I can’t remember.
Jeff Burkhart is the author of “Twenty Years Behind Bars: The Spirited Adventures of a Real Bartender, Vol. I and II,” the host of the Barfly Podcast on iTunes (as seen in the NY Times) and an award-winning bartender at a local restaurant. Follow him at jeffburkhart.net and contact him at jeffbarflyIJ@outlook.com