Have you ever been thrown out of a bar? Perhaps you’ve woken up with a black eye and have no idea how it got there. Have you ever thought that because you have $200, you can go into a bar at 4 p.m. and buy “Shifty Joe” and his miscreant pals a round without a care about who the bartender is or how you’re treating them?
Isolated incidents aside, these may be indicators of a far deeper malady: You or someone you know might be — a douchebag.
But all is not lost. With the guidance of a few of the fine folks of local tap rooms, you can avoid the common pitfalls of your garden variety douchebag and become one of the more acceptable kinds of benign drunk that you wish wouldn’t talk to you when you’re left alone at the front bar.
Ty Connor has been working at The Horsehead Bar and Grill for years. Recipient of the coveted “Best Bartender of Eugene” award given out by Eugene Weekly, he’s seen plenty of high douchebaggery over his tenure.
“Major douchebag moves include not tipping, opening a card and not closing it at the end of the night or, of course, just using a fake card,” Connor said. “It happens all the time.”
“If you wanted a list on ‘How not to be a douchebag,’” said Joshua Finch, a longtime bouncer downtown, “not ordering a blue drink would be number one.
“The problem with the blue drink is the nature of the blue drink. It’s sweet, doesn’t taste much like alcohol, but it’s a pint glass of booze. It’s a surefire way of telling the bouncer you’re going to be a problem. And, if I see a 90-pound girl walking around with a blue drink, I know full well that it should be her first — and last — drink of the evening.”
He continued with a tip for barflies trying to get inside: “It doesn’t matter if your friend yells at me that it’s your birthday when I ask to see your ID. It doesn’t matter, I won’t let you in any faster.”
What seemed like a normal case of tap room douchebag-ness one night almost turned deadly on the job for Finch.
Three years ago, an unassuming middle-aged man was accosting the bartender.
“I hear a conversation that I hear on a regular basis: He had closed a card that he thought he didn’t,” he said.
After asking him to look through any pockets that he may not normally use, the man began doing so.
“I thought he was looking for his card; unbeknownst to me, he had opened a pocket knife in his jacket, and I had been stabbed twice before I knew what was happening,” he said.
With a three-inch blade, Finch was stabbed three times: once in the stomach, once in the side and a ricochet off his sternum. He also sustained two slashes on his arm while trying to control the assault, with 27 staples between the two of them.
The man was quickly subdued by Finch and another bouncer.
“I’m new at bartending,” said Sean Doherty, a bartender at Luckey’s Club Cigar Store in Eugene. “I’ve only been doing it for about a year and a half. What I’ve learned is that assholes get more attention because they’re assholes. If you’re trying to flag me down and I’m busy, I might just decide to delay service, which, by the way, is (Oregon Liquor Control Commission’s) common practice.”
“One person in a group of people may be emotionally affected by something in their life,” said bar patron and service industry professional Matthew Schultz, “but the group of friends that he’s with have a responsibility to make up for their douchebag friend.”
Asa Wigney, a man who has had multiple service-industry positions and now is a cook said, “When someone is a douchebag, it affects everybody that’s not being a douchebag. And that hurts the most.”