March 13 2009
There are some excuses that I'm willing to listen to, and others that
immediately raise my hackles. Today I'm going to focus on a specific
one that I've heard several times recently. Maybe St. Patrick's day is
coming up, so the "Irish" thing is on people's mind…
I swear, guys
– half of the people in this town must be 1/64th Irish or something…
either that, or the drunks have picked a new lie to tell me. All three
incidents happened over two weekends, and all three involved different
people.
Recent incident #1:
Alex: "Dude, did you just vomit all over yourself?"
Drunk guy: "Hey, it's OK – I'm Irish!"
Alex: *facepalm*
Recent incident #2:
Alex: "Hey there buddy, please don't pee in our parking lot. We have bathrooms inside."
Drunk guy : "WOOOOOHOOO! I'm Irish!"
Alex: *facepalm*
I'll
get into a bit more detail with "recent incident #3", because by then I
had finally had enough… It started with fairly standard macho B.S.
Two guys who apparently knew and disliked each other from outside the
bar happened to run into each other one evening while I was at work.
Things
started out calmly, then as the evening progressed and the two
gentlemen drank more and more, they worked themselves into a fighting
temper. Early on, I approached each of them separately and told them
something to the effect of "OK, guys, so far no-one's done anything out
of line, but things look a little tense. We like things to stay calm
here, so please keep it that way"… they both assured me that they were
cool ("It's OK, man, I'm cool, I'm cool").
But of course they
weren't cool… I can see that one of them is definitely the instigator,
much more aggressive than the other, but the other guy isn't backing
down or helping to make things calm, he's willing to throw down.
Eventually the aggressive one walked past the other and gave him a hard,
high-school-style shoulder bump, and the other spun around, ready to
fight.
I'd been expecting something like this to happen, and I'd
given them fair warning, so I was only a step away, and I got between
them. "Cut it out! This is the kind of crap I was talking about
earlier, gentlemen".
The guy who'd been bumped gave me the kind of
answer I like to hear – "I'm sorry, man, but this guy's been eyeing me
all night, and he just shoulder checked me for no reason. I just want
to chill out and drink my beer".
But the other guy… well… "Nah, FUCK THAT!! This fucking fucker
blah blah blah aggressive posturing, insulting terms, name-calling,
several pejorative terms synonymous with homosexual, boring boring
boring…"
(I'm paraphrasing, but you get the idea, I hope…)
I look
over my shoulder at guy number one, "Hey, calm guy, why don't you go sit
down and finish your beer", then back to the aggressive guy "...and I think
you need to get your coat, you don't need to be here anymore tonight."
Suddenly
the guy relaxes a bit, trying to adopt a friendly pose, acting like
he's my buddy. "Oh, c'mon, man – you know how it is, I can't help it,
I'm Irish!"
"Yeah, I know, you can't help it. The same way black guys can't help stealing cars, right?"
"Yeah! No – wait, that's not what I meant!"
I
point my finger at him – "That's exactly what you meant. You put that
racist crap back in your pocket and take it out the door with you."
"But…"
I
just keep talking over his objections. "TAKE OWNERSHIP OF YOUR OWN
CHOICES AND ACTIONS! OR DON'T!! BUT DO IT SOMEWHERE ELSE!!!"
He keeps sputtering and complaining, more confused than angry, but I get him out the door.
Once he's outside, he says "Man, you're like some kind of Nazi or something!"
Standing in the doorway, I say, "I can't help it. I'm German."
And I close the door.
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