Anonymous Confessions of a Bartender

“So it is Sunday night, and there’s nobody in the bar. About an hour and a half into my shift this guy walks in—he’s extremely large, wearing a motorcycle helmet with a swastika across it. He’s already out of control, and my co-worker had warned me earlier about him coming in, so I refuse to serve him. Soon after, he starts tossing pennies at my head and saying that he has to get a drink ‘or else.’ After about 20 minutes, he realizes he’s left his motorcycle somewhere in the strip mall parking lot, but he can’t remember where. To get him out of the bar, I tell him he should get his bike because it could get towed. Once he’s out, I lock up the doors.

“All of the sudden, he flings open the door and walks right in—apparently I didn’t lock it tightly enough. I’m sick of dealing with him, so I tell him I got a call from the police and they’re looking for the owner of a bike that’s parked at the strip mall. As soon as he hears the word police, he freaks out. He pulls out a knife and says I have to take it because he can’t be caught with a weapon—he just got out of jail. I freak out and tell him to toss the knife into the ice well, then grab the phone, lock myself in the bathroom and call the police. On the phone I ask them not to tell the guy that I had called. Of course, when they arrive that’s the first thing they do. I come out to see the cops surrounding him, and as they drag him off he’s yelling at me and says that he’s going to kill me.

“What’s funny is that whole night he was bragging that he belonged to some big scary Orange County motorcycle club, and a few days later an actual member of the club told me that he wasn’t. He also told me he had been ‘taken care of’ after they found out what he had done that night. I don’t think he got killed or anything, just . . . reprimanded.”