Bartenders have seen it all: the best of people, the worst of people, and everything weird that goes in between.
While most long-time bartenders have a slew of stories to pull out among friends, there's always one that tops the rest. Sometimes it's a customer who is so far-gone they enter another realm of behavior, other times it's a chain of events that feel near cartoonish, whatever the details, wild bar stories are abundant and legendary.
In a popular Reddit thread, bartenders shared their craziest stories on the job, and it's a huge reminder to tip big when drinking.
1. From OP:
I will start. I tend bar at an Irish Bar in MN. I like to work week nights because they aren't as busy as weekends but I still make plenty of dough. Anyway, this was a Monday night, it was late in the evening so I was the only employee left working. The manager and other servers had gone home and I was left alone with 8-10 of my regulars. In walked a young man who had clearly been over-served somewhere else. He sat down and tried to order a drink but couldn't articulate what he wanted. I told him that all I was giving him tonight was water.
He was actually really cool about this and drank a few glasses while he sat at the bar. After a while he asked if he could have a drink now? (kinda reminded me of a young child asking for a treat). I told him no and he said "that's cool, I am just gonna go home." I asked if he was driving and he said "Yep." I told him I couldn't let him drive and that I would call him a cab. He said that was stupid and he could drive home fine. I told him that if he got in the car I was obligated to call the police. He snapped! He said "You want to call the cops? Sh*t, I'll call the cops myself!" He proceeded to dial 911 and hand me his cell phone.
I spoke with the dispatch and explained what was going on (she actually laughed). While I was talking to the 911 dispatcher, the young man realized what was going on and started asking for his phone back. I hung up with the dispatch and tried to keep the young man in the bar till the police arrived. He was getting very angry and so I finally gave him his phone back and he ran out of the bar and climbed into his car, peeling out of the parking lot and through two red lights. Two seconds later 4 squad cars came flying down the street and proceeded to pull him over.
Kid calls cops on himself, gets DUI.
2. From CEverii:
I was bartending at this German Sports bar in the late afternoon/early evening when two of my regulars came in. After a few rounds one of the men says he's going to take a smoke and for his friend to watch his things.
The guy gets up from his chair, takes a few steps patting down his pockets and realizes he forgot his smokes. While still walking toward the door, he says "Hey "Cleetus", throw me a cig." His friend opens his pack, and without looking chucks it in the direction of his friend walking toward the door.
At that exact moment, he spun around, and the cigarette landed straight in his mouth, in smoking position. He continued to turn back to face the door then stopped dead in his tracks, realizing what had just happened. We all then continued to freak out and realize that will never happen again in a million years.
3. From Snowman_Assassin:
Mine's from an Irish Pub too, in CA. I worked for these two brothers who owned the place, they're from Ireland. Anyway, the cops in this town are EXTREMELY power crazy, from lack of anything better to do in an affluent area. Anyway, this guy is at the bar getting sh*thoused. He's nice though. He walks outside for a cig, stumbles a little bit, leans against a tree, finishes up and comes back in. A couple cops follow him into the bar, and come up behind him.
They accost him...not sure for what reason, he was quiet outside and I watched him the whole time, and he didn't do anything out of the ordinary. Anyway, they grab him and say "You're drunk! You're under arrest for public intoxication." Now, yeah the dude is drunk, but he's been in before and he always cabs home or something.
I say "Hey he is NOT drunk in public, he's in a private establishment and leave him alone, he's not harming anyone." I admit, I'm no lawyer, so I'm not sure of the technicalities behind him being in public or not, but it was still f*cked up.
The cops tell me to shut the f*ck up, which I don't, so they then say "OK fine, now he'll be drunk in public!" and drag this guy out of the bar into the street.
I'm flipping out, but what could I do? One of my bosses was in back, and hears what's going on (only a few seconds have passed). Now I had worked with the other brother before, and this was my first time working with/meeting this particular brother.
Being the scrappy little Irishman that he is, he comes out and screams "WHAT THE F*CK IS THIS?!" And hops over the bar, runs out to the front, and TACKLES one of the officers to defend his patron. Other cop lets go of their original target, and whips out his nightstick and starts taxing my boss, while he wails on the other cop.
He gets beaten pretty badly, and there's a lot of folks watching by this point, and the cops look around and simply leave. A couple employees bring my boss back in, and he's got blood all over his face, he looks at me and says, "Hey there, what's your name, lad? Don't believe we've met yet".
This all went down so quickly that I just stood there pokerfaced until that moment, then we all had a laugh and got drunk.
There were no legal repercussions on any party involved in this event.
4. From ramblerandgambler:
My uncle (Irish) runs an Irish bar in NY, he was in the back one night doing paperwork after hours when he heard glass clinking in the alley behind, someone was stealing his bottles or something. He reaches above the bar and grabs a hurl signed by the galway all Ireland winners from 1988 that was hanging on the wall. He runs out the back and sees a seven foot tall black guy who weighs more than two fat people put together. He bangs the hurl against the wall and starts running at him with it. The guy starts screaming and runs off, dropping whatever barrels, glass he was robbing.
My uncle goes back to the paperwork and an hour later, there's a knock at the front door. It's the black guy with two NYPD, the guy shouts, "That's the guy, that's the motherf*cker who came at me with the giant wooden spoon!"
5. From trent599:
I work in a big-a*s brewpub right on the edge of a big nightlife/swanky section of town. One night it was pretty slow and this one woman walks in and sits at the bar and asks for garlic. I assume she's from nearby, nicely dressed and polite speaker, maybe she needs some garlic to cook with. So I run down to the kitchen and fill a small to-go box with some garlic cloves. I come back, hand her the box, and she can barely contain herself.
Saying how I and another server she had seen that day (apparently she had been at a friend's party earlier on, might explain the odd behavior) "restored her faith in people". She handed me a ten dollar bill to try and pay, I told her it was on the house. So she put the bill in my pocket, sat down at the bar, and started munching on the raw garlic cloves.
She ordered up a Grey Goose and soda, so I certainly didn't mind her hanging around the bar. So she proceeded to munch on garlic and tell me a bit about herself, how she was a local, doing well with her and her friend running a small business together, and asked if I was single because she knew some girls who would absolutely love me. (I lied on that one because I wasn't too comfortable with the thought of a slightly-off-her-rocker 40-year-old trying to set me up.) After another vodka soda and some more garlic, she proceeds to give me a $20 tip (more than 100% tip) and a scarf from her business to "give to your girl", as she put it.
I proceeded to trade the scarf for 15 beer slips from my boss.
*Edit: After giving me the $10, I tried to give it back to her. She then threatened to throw up on the bar if I didn't keep it
tl;dr: Oddball woman walked into my bar, asked for garlic. Proceeded to eat garlic cloves raw, tipped me $30 and a scarf for being nice to her.
6. From jadefirefly:
To be honest upfront: I am not a bartender. But I was IN a bar staffed by a friend of my boyfriends, and it's a fairly quiet night, and suddenly there's this muffled thwump sound, and utter silence falls over the entire room.
A woman halfway down the bar had dropped her goddamned baby on the floor.
7. From BaseballGuyCAA:
I used to bartend for an upscale catering company--weddings, corporate events, etc. Worst story ever was a white-trashy re-wedding. They only contracted our company for the bar, and it was a cheaper place doing the food. Worst night of tips I had at that job, by a large statistical margin. But that wasn't the worst part.
Both bride and groom had children from a previous marriage. The groom's son, in particular, was quite endearing to me. He was middle-school age, and smart as all hell - the rare small child who can hold a semi-adult conversation and hold his own. I kept him stocked with Shirley Temples all night, and we talked a fair amount of baseball.
So the wedding party decided to commemorate the occasion with shot glasses for the wedding party. Said shot glasses were put to use, aggressively, throughout the night. At the end, as we're packing everything up, one of the shot glasses is left on the counter.
Most of the guests have gone by this point. Both bride and groom are well into their '40s, so by 10:30, even, the place was fairly empty. I ask around about the shot glass, and find out that it belongs to the groom. He is seated with his son and the bride's daughter at a table by the dance floor. I walk over.
The groom is barely coherent, passing out in the chair. The children are trying in vain to keep him awake. At the same time as me, a few other people notice this situation and begin assisting with him. With the situation under control, I want as little to do with this sordid reminder of the broken home I come from. I set the shot glass on the table, and go to leave. But as I take a step away, the little girl tells me "Please don't give it back to him, he'll drink more then!"
I stop, and the son grabs the shot glass and pockets it. He reassures me that he'll keep it from his dad for the rest of the night. The look in his eyes tells me that he means it. It's a look I know all too well.
I've never wanted to quit a job more in my life than that drive home.
8. From mattyice360:
I used to work in a small pub on the bottom floor of a fairly large concert venue. During our Halloween party I had to jump the bar and break up a fight between two guys dressed in the same exact Mario Costume
Apparently, Mario A asked Mario B's g/f who ironically enough was dressed as Princess Peach, if she wanted to get with the "real Super Mario" he then showed her his erection pressed through his uber-tight overalls and said "How about that Mushroom?" At that point Mario B went all Smash Bros on him.
The expression on the Police Officer's face was priceless as he walked in and saw us trying to separate two drunk, bruised and bloody Marios.
9. From somebooksplease:
I work in a hotel bar in the UK, I've seen some interesting things over the last three years of working in this place. Bar fights between the fathers of the brides and grooms on the wedding day, full-blown marital arguments, drunken millionaires, inappropriately aged women slipping me their room keys, drunken Japanese businessmen falling asleep at/on the bar and 18-hour shifts over New Years. My favorite story, though, is the one I trot out when I talk with the new staff that I end up training on the bar.
The day that I turned up to find a sh*t behind the bar. It was a lovely color of brown, a bestial brown, if you are a Warhammer fan. I was a little surprised, so I informed the duty manager of it, who came around, had a little laugh about it with me then I cleaned it up. End of the story? No.
I started asking around the staff to hear if anything else similar had happened in the last few days, trying to identify our phantom sh*tter. It turned out that this one guest had some mental problems and had been defecating at random throughout the hotel and on the bus that he was part of the tour with. I think he was with his parents on the trip. He'd sh*t in his room, he'd sh*t outside his hotel room door, he'd sh*t on the coach. He also wandered out of the hotel on his own and into the town center and was terrorizing the local branch of the Halifax bank. I like to use it as an idea of how each day at work can be completely unlike the one before.
10. From Mestin:
I was working the night of the 2010 Grey Cup game (Canada's Superbowl), it was a super busy night (the Riders were playing so the place was PACKED) and I sh*t you not during half-time this huge b*stard walks in wearing giant sunglasses, a trench coat and a hard hat, drunk as f*ck. I watch him take a step towards the bar and he stops dead and just stands there for a few seconds. All of a sudden he opens his coat and pulls out this giant f*cking salami, takes a bite, yells "f*ck ya!" as loud as possible while holding up the three-foot long salami log and just walks out stumbling.
11. From mrwhistler:
Was bartending at a family-owned Tex-Mex place in New Hampshire. A coworker and I were chatting about something on the news and I said "Yeah, at least it's not Russia!" Suddenly from the end of the bar a massive woman with a thick accent yells, "VAHT YOU SAY ABOUT RRRUSSIA?"
She then started regaling the entire bar with stories of the Soviet glory days, babbling on in a crazy Bond villain accent about how great everything used to be. She proceeded to finish her margarita, left a $10 on the bar, and walked out. We then noticed that she'd peed all over the stool.
We ended up throwing away the stool.
12. From maniana:
I worked in a very high volume cocktail bar, one night around Christmas there was a DJ playing pumping big band swing. This was in the UK so everyone was f*cking annihilated. There was this really hammered dwarf who would repeatedly stagger over to the bar, get a bartender to lean all the way over to hear him and whisper, "I'm sorry I'm a little drunk" before exploding with laughter and then staggering back to the dance floor. I can think of crazier stories but this one stands out as one of the funniest scenes.
13. From luckynumberorange:
I am not a bartender but security but this just happened the other night. So we are closing up the joint and this crazy lady who has been talking to herself and cursing for the last half hour decides to go into the bathroom. She is in there for maybe 8 minutes and we are trying to get everyone out so we make her come out. She finally leaves the bathroom and this dude gives her a little bit of sh*t about hogging the one bathroom (the ladies room was out of service so we were down to one.) She proceeds to start screaming every curse word I can think of at this guy, and while she is yelling at him she just starts pissing her pants.
Well she finishes pissing and we push her out the door, and then she comes around knocking on the windows and flipping people off. She looks at me, blows me a kiss and I bow in return, and then she goes back to flipping everyone else off. A girl who was with the guy goes "What is she saying?" I tell her that she is telling me to have a goodnight but apparently everyone else can go f*ck themselves.
14. From Mrubuto:
I got a pretty good one.
I used to work at a horse racing track, the place was over a hundred years old and had all sorts or weird corridors and cheap walls.
We did Friday night racing and about 5pm this guy was already sh*t faced drinking scotch, he offered to slip me $5 if I would give him free booze all night...yeah right lol.
Eventually, he goes missing and his friend who was a lot more sober and quite nice asks if I've seen him, I say no I haven't seen him since around 6pm and now it's about 9pm. All of a sudden I hear BAM!!!! BANG!!!! BOOM!!!! an extremely loud commotion coming from the ladies washroom soon followed by a man covered head to toe in blood casually walking out of the bathroom trying to act as nonchalant as possible, like nothing happened and the whole bar wasn't staring at him.
Turns out the guy had found a place where there was some construction in a restricted area and was climbing around in the walls and eventually found the ladies room where we suspect he was watching women pee.
A support beam must have gave way or he just slipped, he must have fell at least 20 feet through all sorts of wood, metals, wires and then into a bathroom stall.
The average age of a women customer in my bar was at least mid 50's so I hope he had fun. And yes, he was apprehended by security and arrested.
15. From Kengbang:
Bartending at an Indian restaurant just outside of DC. Big bar, not many people ever come to the actual bar, simply go straight to dinner. But one woman sits at the bar and looks at our appetizer menu. She asks if there's anything that isn't spicy because apparently she had just come from surgery where a portion of her tongue was removed. I pointed out the most bland thing, and put in an order while she ordered a vodka tonic.
When the order comes out, she eats a few bites and proceeds to sweat profusely. She runs to the bathroom repeatedly and is freaking out all the while asking for multiple vodka tonics. After our owner came out and apologized, he offered to take chicken and have it cooked in bland yogurt. He gave her the drinks for free and the specially made chicken as well.
She then freaked out a little further when he left, saying she would take it and feed it to her dog and asked for one more vodka tonic before she left. Either she was seriously crazy, or deviously smart. Who comes to an Indian restaurant after having a portion of your tongue removed and sensitivity to spices?
16. From Mohawk_Mod:
I've been raised in the hospitality industry in Australia, my family have owned and run hotels and bars since well before I was born.
Needless to say, I have seen some pretty incredible sh*t in my time, but by far the best was watching my mother (all 5'7" of her) come out from behind the bar to grab two brawling bikies by their beards, twist the hair in her fists till their eyes watered and they stopped punching on, and then demand that they each took a bar stool and sit in opposite corners of the bar or she would, and I quote directly, "give them a f*cking hiding that their mothers would be proud to witness."
At this point I'm figuring that I'll be burying my mother the next day unless I do something, so I grab hold of the baseball bat we keep under the bar and go to launch myself over the counter when, to the surprise of everyone in the pub, these hard a*s bikies do exactly as they're told and don't move until my mother tells them to get up, shake hands and buy each other a beer...
From that day onward I never stepped on the wrong side of the old girl again.
17. From endogirl:
I used to be a cart girl when I was in university so I had to put up with some huge creeps who thought I liked being hit-on by old men. The worst was during a tournament that was put on for police officers (not sure what division it was), one jack-a*s totally crossed the line. I usually drive by and ask the golfers if I could get them anything and one cop said "yea, a blow-job". I was so furious that I snapped "well I'm sure one of your buddies wouldn't mind doing that for you" and drove off. I told the other cart girls to avoid them for the rest of the day, don't piss off the people who are getting you drinks.
18. From Sparky916:
I've been at my bar for about 5 years now. It's a little dive bar in Sacramento, CA. We sling some great drinks and have a blast. About a year after I had started working there (I was about 22) three good looking girls come in to the bar and sit down. All three of them were probably at least a solid 7. After about 3-4 rounds, they start talking about anal with their significant others. It was almost a stereotypical conversation. One girl tried it and hated it, one girl was still uneasy about it.
And the last...well she LOVED it. LOVED it so much that she told a story about how her and her dude were in Macy's after some afternoon delight. I was pouring a draft beer at the time, trying my hardest not to make it blatantly obvious that I was listening to every word they were saying. The story went on about how they were downstairs of Macy's when the girl had to let out a little fart. Well...as she went to let out her fart, c*m came out of her a*s!
So much that she had to rush to the bathroom. My efforts to be sneaky about not listening to what they were saying failed when I dropped the 3/4 full glass of beer on the ground and spraying tap beer all over the place from dying of laughter. To this day, the story has burnt a hole in my soul.
19. From DontGuessWhereIWork:
I now manage a bar right outside DC where I've bartended for at least 5 years. Some of these didn't happen to me personally, but to a coworker:
Naked man comes in, asks for drink. The bartender calls the police. Police come, cuff him, wrap him in newspaper because he had shat himself, and carry him away.
Our 18-year-old, fresh-faced busser (still has braces) gets a bj in the bathroom at our closed holiday party by a 50-something semi-regular who somehow managed to get in. Three times in the next week she comes in saying "Seth owes me money." The last time she came in, she brought a dude who was obviously her pimp. Veiled threats ensue. I ban her then next time I see her.
Semi-regular drops a bag with a good amount of weed in it. Once we close, a server finds it and puts it in the safe for me. Guy comes back the next day wondering if "um, anyone found, you know....anything on the ground." We respond, "Well we can't tell you if we found it unless you tell us what it is." He shakes his head and leaves.
Guy tries to get server's attention by poking her with a fingernail file. Draws blood. Bartender boots him with extreme prejudice. Guy comes back later that week and the same bartender was working. Bartender asks him what the fuck he thinks he's doing there and guy rears back and pokes the bartender in the eye as hard as he can. Not a he-tried-to-hit-him-but-accidentally-poked-him poke, but a I'm-gonna-poke-you-in-the-eye-like-I've-done-this-1000-times-before poke. Apparently eye-poking is all in the elbow. Cops cart him off and server and bartender eventually testify against him in court.
Pack of derpinas enter and try to order everything we specifically don't carry because we try to keep the frat guys/sorority girls out: flavored vodkas, Jaegermeister, energy drinks, pitchers of beer, etc. They finally settle on long island ice teas. Bartender eventually cuts them off because they're wooing so loudly it's driving out everyone except the lurchers/probable sex offenders. Becky FLIPS OUT and demands another LIT. She's so drunk she doesn't notice the bartender fill up a glass out of the rinse compartment of the sink, squirt a little coke on top, and charge her $9 for it. She gladly pays, downs the sink water, and leaves.
Bartender shatters a pint glass and manages to get multiple cuts on both hands. There's no back up and it's too many cuts for band-aids. He puts latex gloves on, duct-tapes them around his wrists, and bartends with the gloves slowly filling with blood for a couple of hours.
I've also been punched in the face but that story is no fun.
20. From LiberalTennessean:
I had a regular/stalker at a place I bartended at while in college. She came in every night for two weeks straight to figure out my schedule. She was in her early forties, dirty blonde, shoulder length hair and hid her sunken eyes behind large, plastic rimmed glasses. She had the body of Phyllis from The Office but the confidence of Jenny McCarthy...and the crudeness to boot.
She made it very well known that she was sexually attracted to me. For example, after many shots of Goldshlager and Berringer white zinfandel, she would often offer to give me blowjobs...loudly. The other regulars soon and easily caught on and it became a sad joke.
Each time I would politely decline, crack a witty joke and move on with my business. This went on for close to six months. Every time I worked...she was there. Seductively licking her cracked lips and shouting innuendo. Every. Damn. Night.
I began to get quite perturbed. So, I start giving it back to her. Telling her I wanted it but was afraid I would get in trouble. The regulars started in on her too. When I would go grab stock, or food for a patron, the regulars would tell her I was really in to her but was nervous of the age difference. I was 23 at the time.
Graduation soon came. As did my last night. My stalker obviously knew. On my last night, she came in dressed up in her sexiest outfit. She quickly got hammered and the floodgate of come-ons rolled off her tongue with halitosis quickly following. She began loudly begging, "Please just let me suck your cock!"
This is where the story gets really good.
I told her (within earshot of my regulars) that I was going to go out back for a smoke break and we could do it there. Only there was an embarrassing issue holding me back. I said, "This is really embarrassing, but the only way I am able to get hard is if I shit...on someone's chest." There wasn't a beat missed before I heard, "That's totally fine as long as I can use Saran Wrap."
Obviously, the rest of the bar simultaneously gasped and sat waiting on my reply. She hadn't finished her sentence before I had pulled out a container of plastic wrap and said, "I had Mexican for lunch so it's a good thing this is industrial."
The roar of cheers and laughter wrang through the bar as I continued by telling her, "Get ready and I'll meet ya out back in 5." She grabbed the wrap as if it were a preternatural instinct and made her way outside.
After about 20 minutes, she game back inside with a wad of industrial plastic wrap in her hand and a face full of utter disappointment and belted out, "I thought you were gonna come out back and sh*t on my chest!?!"
By this time, most of the rest of the staff had come to bare witness to this, the unbelievable yet hilarious meltdown. I went up to her and planted a big smacking kiss on her lips and thanked her for the best, last night I could ever asked for. I bought the bar a round of Goldshlager in dedication to my most dedicated regular.
I still visit that bar every time I'm in town and sometimes run into her. Each time I buy her...and her now husband dinner, a shot and a nod to the days that gave me some of my most memorable times.
EDIT: TL;DR Had a regular that, after months of begging to give me a blow-job, agreed to let me sh*t on her chest as long as we could use Saran Wrap.