Monday night I was invited out for drinks at O'Neill's in San Mateo, and ran into one of the biggest pet peeves I have. Someone not knowing their place.
I'm not talking about a student who gets unruly with a teacher, or a person berating someone clearly in a better position than them type of knowing their place. I'm not talking Gone With the Wind or Roots white racists telling slaves that they don't know their place. Simply put, I'm not talking about any of the common themes and derogatory meanings usually attached to someone not knowing their place. I'm talking about someone literally not knowing where they are and acting like an idiot because of it.
I'll preface this story by saying that the person acting like an idiot in the bar was actually the most sober person in the bar.
My friend and I arrived at about 10 to find three different groups at the bar. In the back at a round table was a group of four people having some cocktails and looking at what appeared to be work documents. I support this. Any opportunity to mix work with drinking sounds like a great thing, unless of course you're a bus driver, truck driver or any other pilot of any kind. Also probably not recommended for surgeons. But hey, if you're just looking at some hand outs and papers and chatting, what better way?
At the bar you had a group of regulars, you know the grizzly old guys who just need to get out of their house so they don't feel like they're drinking alone. They're pretty harmless, have their 6 drinks or whatever and leave, and generally are the only reason bars stay open on a Monday night. This group of regulars were joined at the bar that evening by my friend and I, as well as two girls, one of which had a light beer and the other who was sipping a glass of white wine. We'll get to the intelligence or lack thereof of drinking white wine at an Irish pub later.
Last, there was a group of about 8 people sitting at a table who were absolutely shit housed. This group was singing to the songs, making jokes, laughing loudly and basically doing everything you imagine goes on at bars. And they were doing it on a Monday which means that they either didn't have to work on Tuesday, they did but didn't care if they were hung over, or they had something serious to celebrate and come what may for the rest of the week. Regardless, when I see 8 people out on a Monday night having a great time, I'm excited and happy for them and wishing I didn't have to wake up at 5:45 the next morning.
About midway through my drink, I look over my friend's shoulder to see the two girls shooting angry glares and looks over at the drunk group. One of those, "Oh, my, God, Becky, why are they being so obnoxious?" looks. And as I watch this idiot blonde girl sipping her chardonnay, she keeps turning around and throwing nasty looks over to the drunk table. A loud chorus of "Don't Stop Believing" breaks out when the song comes on the bar's stereo, and little Ms. Napa says out loud, to her friend but loud enough for the bar to hear, "Oh my god, will you shut up?!"
Of course, drunk people don't notice this, but I'm enraged. I have the urge to pick up my hi-ball, throw it as hard as I can at her head (after drinking the contents of course), and then walking up to her and forcing vodka down her throat. I have the urge to yell, "Shut the fuck up you moron," at her while buying a new round for the people at the table. Of course, my friend is a lady, so I'm being restrained and polite. Then, blondie sets off a firestorm by turning around, raising her voice so the table can hear her and yelling, "Will you PLEASE be quiet?!" This sets off the drunk table of course, and they turn around to say exactly what I was thinking for the past 20 minutes: "This is a bar!"
Not a library. Not your dining room at home where you can drink crushed grapes and watch The Bachelor in peace, not an SAT testing facility and certainly not a funeral parlor. A bar. Where people go to drink alcohol, talk and sing with friends, get inebriated and do things they can't do at home on a Monday night like have an 8 person sing along to Journey and cause a nuisance to all their neighbors. One of the drunk girls has a hand on her man and manages to diffuse the situation by telling him to ignore those idiots. Then, two even more drunk morons stumble in, two guys who are close to drooling and look like their eyes could shut and leave them passed out on the floor at any minute. Pretentious wine snob blonde girl, who they see immediately as potential hook up material (I guess even idiots look hot when you've had enough whiskey), becomes their new neighbor at the bar and she begins trying to enlist them into fighting her fight for her, even going so far as to send one of the guys over to ask the table to be quiet. Poor guy has a BAC over .12, so he doesn't even know what he's really doing when he does it.
Finally, the confrontation ends when the drunk group decides to switch bar locations and check out McGovern's down the street. But not before the two sober chicks let loose another tirade about "showing respect" and "keeping the volume at a reasonable level," which is met with 16 middle fingers and one more, "You're in a fucking bar bitch, go home if you don't like it."
Once they're gone, girl looks over at me. I've been glaring at her the entire time with daggers, and she makes eye contact with me and shakes her head, rolls her eyes, like, "Can you believe there are people this idiotic in the world?" My return stare says, "Yes, I can believe it, because I'm looking at you right now."
If you want to drink in peace, as in peace and quiet, pick a place to drink where the volume level is acceptable to you. Parks are good. Your home is good. Bring a flask to your local library. Hell, I've even heard monks like to get drunk off wine in silence, beating the first neophyte to speak out loud. Go there. But for the love of all things sacred, know your place. Know your setting. Know where you are. And if it's a bar, where people go to get drunk and be loud, and you don't like it, either shove another drink down your throat and join the party or shove a ball gag in your mouth and walk out the back door, because people would rather see you undergo the Zed Pulp Fiction treatment in the back room than hear you bitch about someone being too loud in a public forum for alcohol intake.
So to the blonde chick at O'Neill's on Monday night complaining over her glass of chilled white, I hope I don't see you again. Because if I do, I'm going to take 5 shots of tequila as fast as humanly possible, top them off with a Mind Eraser, and then pick the bar stool next to yours for my famous top of my voice rendition of every single song from West Side Story, while playing drums on the bar with a jackhammer.
Don't be that girl. Pick a place with your required decibel level or leave, but don't tell other people to keep it down in an Irish pub on a Monday night. You're in the wrong place.
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