Tips from the bar: Daylight Savings/Halloween Edition

I love Halloween. From my mother letting me be a gypsy in an Hermes scarf at age five, to my slutty & offensive high school Halloween costumes, to finally settling on my hopefully clever & funny college costumes (Hunter S. Thompson being my personal favorite), Halloween has been my jam.

This year, however, I chose to work on my beloved holiday in the hopes of cashing in on our society’s fetish of getting wasted in costumes (re: date functions).

And, oh, what a choice that was, because on top of being Halloween, this past Saturday was also Daylight Savings.

AKA bars were open for an extra hour that night.

AKA there was an extra hour of throbbingly shitty Taylor Swift remixes and inebriated humans yelling at me.

I didn’t realize this until around 7pm, when my coworker laughingly (that dark laughter that masks the urge to cry) told me about the extra hour.

I was determined to make the most of this. “Mo’ money, am I right?” But, inside, a dark feeling gripped my heart. Like most of my dark emotions, I suppressed it and kept sending smiling snaps of me in my banging costume.

Picture this: Me dressed as Jessie from Pokémon’s Team Rocket, ready to have a fucking good night serving up Jagerbombs and RBVs.

The night started deceptively slow. Despite the presence of one “DJ Crawf” (which is perhaps the laziest DJ name ever; he just took the “ord” off of his last name, giving his stage name a slightly unfinished sound to it), Boylan was fairly slow from 10-11pm.

There was a left shark, three Catholic schoolgirls (whom I now doubt are really Catholic, despite their plaid skirts and gold crosses), a Dexter in leather gloves, and a smattering of assorted felines.

But, like almost everything in my life, it went from 0-60 pretty fucking quick.

So, at around 11:45pm, all of the bartenders were on for what would be a hellishly long night.

At midnight we all laugh/cried at the prospect of three more hours. Most of my knowledge about Daylight Savings Time comes from National Treasure so in my head I’m blaming Nicholas Cage for all of my physical and emotional pain.

At this point, I am also wishing I were still in my Wednesday Addams costume from the night before so I would have an excuse to be an apathetic bitch to everyone at the bar, but, alas, this was not the case.

One quick shout out to the man who belittled me for my job and my choice of major. I am a full time student with a job studying what I love. You, on the other hand, were alone at a college bar with a calculus book and drank eight whiskey sodas while insulting everyone around you.

I’d also like to give a special shout out to everyone who tried to negotiate drink prices on Saturday night with me. This is not a European farmer’s market. I am not a gypsy. There is no haggling.

When I ask for $10, please give me $10, not $5 and a wink. Your wink is not that valuable, Mr. I-Played-Lacrosse-in-High School. Not to mention giving away free drinks is stealing from my boss, and I happen to like my bosses because they were nice enough to employ me and then continue to employ me.

Another helpful tip for you guys: please don’t assault anyone at the bar, especially someone who works there. When the barback is carrying two giant jugs of ice up the stairs and yells “excuse me!” so as to be heard over the music, please don’t turn around and punch that barback. Especially don’t proceed to start a fight with the bouncers as they escort you out. Because we will call the cops, and you will not have a very fun rest of the night.

That is not to say that everyone is an awful human when they drink. A very special shout out to the couple who accidentally walked out on their tab, but came back the next day to not only pay it, but also leave a tip for their bartender! “Some humans are actually nice people”—Abraham Lincoln, probably.

Despite all of the insane things that happened that night, the worst possible moment was when my phone jumped back to 1am, and I knew in my heart it was really 2am, but all technology kept lying to me.

We roughed it out for that last hour, amazed that people were still ordering Red Bull Vodkas. Finally 2am rolled around for the second and last time, and I have never taken more pleasure in watching everyone get kicked out.

The lights went on, and it was like a horror movie of zombies with dead eyes slowly exiting the building.

As we started to clean the bar, I got a text from my roommate informing me she had just woken up on the couch and wanted wings. I, knowing Wings Over Charlottesville was most definitely closed, still encouraged her to order wings because I’m a dick, and also because I was curious if maybe she could somehow get ahold of some wings.

When I got home at around 4am, she was in the middle of unsuccessfully calling Wings Over for the seventh time, annoyed by the dial tone she kept getting. We ended up eating Ramen and watching Arrested Development. And I think somewhere in there is a metaphor for Halloween, but I’m too lazy to find it.

Until next week.