Everything she hated about the world

It was no secret that she hated her job. Well, she hated what it represented on a grand scale and felt it was an exorbitant waste of energy to justify her time there. Her justifications were obvious but were so often repeated that she began to wonder if they meant anything at all -- if they had become obsolete in their redundancy. She detested talking about the reasons she chose to work in a bar almost as much as she did talking about her tattoos. Her blood begins to boil the moment these questions are asked but being a mule in the service industry, one is expected to keep a smile and be nice. Sometimes she wished she could say what she was really thinking to all the assholes that truly believe themselves to be worthy of her time, or anyone's for that matter.

Like the moron who thought it was wildly hilarious and appropriate to lick a tray.

Scene: Tuesday night at the bar at which she is employed. A night during the week where she would spend most of the night finishing any crossword she could get her hands on and daydreaming of all the things she would rather be doing.

Cue: Drunk party of eight. Stumble in around 11:00 p.m. Because she has been working in the industry  for more years that she wishes to remember, she can already tell that a) they are so drunk, they believe that they are funnier than they actually are, b) they think they're hilarious even if they're not drunk which is the most annoying kind of customer, c) there are mostly men, which means they have a genetic mutation that makes their voices louder and more abrasive after a few drinks and expect their female server to listen to their ridiculous stories and profundities whilst keeping a smile on her face and continuing to bring them drinks even though their eyes are glazed over and their lips are covered in the saliva they can't seem to keep in their mouths.

She brings one round of drinks and hopes she can ignore them for the rest of the night because they are drunk and will likely not remember if she had been over to see them or not. She could easily tell them they ordered from the bar and they wouldn't know the difference. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The drunkest of the batch insists on ordering rounds of drinks and shots from her and she continues to wish them all deadly hangovers. Each time she comes to the table something hilarious  has just happened and everyone is hootin' and hollerin' and she wants to punch them all in their sloppy, drunk faces.

While she is out back, likely smoking because this is a job that drives her to smoke and to drink (two things that she is certain she would not do if she wasn't so gainfully employed), drunk guy #1 orders 12 shots from the bar. Yes, twelve for the four people still drinking at the table. Of course, she knows this can only mean that a) they're on the verge of going blind and drooling while trying to talk and b) she will make no money off this table because it is the ones that order the most drinks that can least afford to pay for them (let alone tip appropriately). It's a man/ego thing, which she thinks Freud, Plato, Descartes or even Oprah should have delved into a little deeper, the connection between the male ego and paying/tipping. She could offer some valuable insight, for sure.

Hoping that this is the final trip she has to make to the table, she drops the shots off, leaving the tray on the table for them to put the empty shot glasses back on when they are done proving how manly and hilarious they are. After finishing a crossword that she started earlier that evening, she makes her way back to pick up the empty glasses and hopes they want the bill. As she is collecting the shot glasses and piling them back on the tray, that is now a small pool of spilled shots and drinks, one of the guys in the corner begins yelling at her to stop. Brushes her hands out of the way and is removing the glassware from the tray. He then proceeds to bring the tray to his lips, like a child going to finish the sugary milk after eating his cereal, and drinks the foul remnants of alcohol in the tray.

Everyone at the table is confused but still laughing and perhaps wondering if they've all gone too far. She, of course, is baffled and speechless. Just when she thinks the spectacle is over, this drunken fool begins to lick the tray in its entirety. He makes sure to go slow enough that she can see the length of his spongey tongue soak up all the tropical diseases that are surely mutating and multiplying due to the perfect balance of saliva, alcohol, urine, soggy dish rags, sweat, cold sores, dirty dishes and every strand of the flu virus that has passed through that very tray in the last year. It's all in there, she knows it and she also knows that this man will surely die in his sleep due to his total lack of discretion and/or maturity. And she doesn't feel bad for hoping to read about it in the paper the next day.

Once the debacle is over, without even trying to wipe the disgusted look off her face, she grabs the glasses and the tray which is now more riddled with germs and other mutations than it was before and brings the bill over without even asking if they were ready to leave. She decided for them that it was time to go home.

At this point, she didn't even care if she would get a tip at all -- 'pay me and go the fuck home' was all she was thinking. It was the tipping point, the single action by another that affirmed her love/hate relationship with the world. On the one hand, her bleeding heart always felt compassion and empathy for people that struggle, that are hurting, that bare their humanity in a way that demands compassion, which she felt she could see more clearly than most. But then there was that thing she carried in the other hand. The weight of her distaste for the current human condition which she observed on a small scale (a bacteria sampling, if you will) most nights of the week. It was saturated with ego, self-absorption, sex and power. It was men versus women, whose dick was bigger than the other, which woman had a tighter ass or better looking breasts, battle of the sexes, womanizing supported by both sexes, gluttony, debauchery and sexism. The suits versus the hard-hats, blonde extensions versus dreadlocks, skinny versus fat, pretty or ugly, powerful or weak, confident or submissive, ego, ego, ego.

There is nothing healthy about this. And yet, as she has always known, it was a small experiment, a miniscule sample of humanity. This made her heart bleed the most. The simple fact that she spent most of her life defending the state of the world, believing in the goodness and kindness of others, doing her best to practice what she preached and yet, here she was playing an active role in perpetuating an industry that thrives on peoples insecurities and uses that as a way to make money. It was backwards, it was everything she hated about the world.