Getting up
Hello,
I think I wanted to write about something nicer than this - like that my ales are selling out faster than I can tap them, which is incredibly great and I’m so happy about it - but sometimes spanners are thrown in the works of a pub and a whole toolbox has fallen into mine this week.
Without getting into the specifics, I had a shit incident on Friday. It’s not my first shit incident, it’s not my worst shit incident, it’s not going to be my last because running a business where people come to get intoxicated tends to lead to them. But it is the type of thing that prompts you to have to think about all of this and how you can stop as many of them as you possibly can.
For something you can do much cheaper and easier at home, a lot of people are determined to drink in pubs. The vast majority of the time that’s because it’s a nice place to go: you don’t have to do the dishes, you can meet someone outside your own homes, you aren’t paying for the heating and someone else serves you. There’s an atmosphere, you’re meeting people around other people, there’s a sense of community and shared space. It’s something base that humans crave, being sociable.
Even the older fellas who come into my pub and barely speak to anyone but me (and not much to me) come in to be there to be around other people. Fuck knows, lockdown taught us you can’t only be in your own space or you’ll start going balls-out crazytown bananapants. We all need that sense of connection to a wider humanity, every country has a version of it and it might be church or mosque or temple or, as it is in the UK: the pub.
Having worked for Spoons I have an acute awareness of the fourth emergency service status of a house anyone can walk into where you can find someone to speak to. That’s a separate post, which I will write sooner or later. The point here is that being in the pub is something desirable, something people want to be allowed.
I’m not particularly quick to bar people. I do it where it’s needed (any form of harassment) or where my hand is forced by the law (drugs, violence) or when it becomes clear there’s no amount of alcohol I can trust a drinker with. Sometimes that’s because they turn into a grade-1 listed arsehole after a few and it’s impossible to work out how many that takes or sometimes that’s for their own good, vulnerable people I’ve picked up off the floor too many times to ignore that there’s something the matter.
I wouldn’t want to run a posh pub or gentrified beer bar. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with them - fuck knows, I go in quite a few of them - but it’s not something I have the knack for. I don’t actually know how to stop coked-up fintech marketers glassing the bar staff over the price of a third of 13% NEIPA, that’s not experience I’ve got. I could probably learn but why bother when plenty of people do know that and I’m familiar with something totally else: the rough locals’ pub.
Locals’ pubs are different to, say, train station pubs because even in an airport Spoons you can get regulars (shout out to the early morning staff in the Stansted one who used to know me) but when you’re local everyone knows your business. The entire of North Heath knows I had a shit incident on Friday night and half of them know the specific names involved, the rest now spiralling into a whisper game of increasingly ludicrous accusations.
Which sucks. I’ve worked my arse off to try and get people back in the pub and this is definitely a bit of a setback. But that’s the job and as sad and angry about it as I might be on a personal level, on a professional one I have to sluice off the misery like a boxer in their corner and get the fuck back up.
There’s no pub where you get zero trouble. Actually, that’s not true; The Tailor’s Chalk, the Wetherspoons in Sidcup where I randomly covered a shift last year, actually has no trouble. But realistically, wherever you serve alcohol there’s an inherent risk. Especially when it’s somewhere people want to be in and get angry when they’re told they can’t be.
FOMO wasn’t invented by millennials. People want to be in the pub because other people are. Because they want it to be their house, even though it’s actually mine (well, not really but I’m responsible for it at least) and because being part of the community of a pub does at least give you social shares in the place.
And I get that. I work in pubs because I like them, I understand them, I like getting drunk and being a bit stupid in them when I get a night off.
There’s stupid like putting Return Of The Mack on the jukebox five times in a row (all different versions, mind you and to be fair, the pub was shut at the time) and the sort of mindless stupidity that leaves the landlady with no choice except barring you.
The sort that turns into long admin and discussions with authorities. The kind that has to be clipped on your CCTV. The type that leaves marks.
It probably sounds weird to be incredibly sad about barring a bunch of people who I’m also incredibly angry at the behaviour of. But I am sad. It’s a point of pride that I run my pub, which is rough, in a way where that roughness is a charm and not a threat.
I’m a bit of a terrier in the sense I’m not particularly large (compared to big men, anyway) but I’ll bite your fucking arm off if you push me. People don’t push me. There’s a genuine sense of respect for the fact this is my pub and real hostility towards people who don’t respect that.
And yes I’ve bribed them with roast potatoes and jukebox nights and giving the pub the patience and energy it needs. Being loved is far more important than being feared, soz Machiavelli. But they have to know there’s something in the background, underneath all that nice welcoming stuff, that will bar them if they fuck up.
In all fairness, this lot did realise I was going to bar them. Started arguing with me about it before the dust had settled, which was a stupid move because I was still about 95% pure rage at that point but my answer didn’t change by the time I cooled down. Couldn’t, even if I wanted it to.
It’s a sobering reminder of why I work every Friday night. There are things you can’t leave to your staff.
Things will happen that you can’t control and all you can do is deal with them. I have, with this. Put aside my feelings about the whole thing and done it as right as I can by every party involved because if you want people to respect that they’re barred, you need to be fair in the way you do it.
It’s miserable that it happened.
On Saturday I had three dogs in my big bar and I sold right out of cock-a-leekie stew, even if I hadn’t had time to get down to Erith Morrisons and get haggis for sausage rolls on the bar. It could’ve been a better Burn’s night - but then, it could easily have been a far worse one.
We sold through the first firkin of real ale in two and a half days. The two I’ve put on now might not last me until I can get another one on, people are coming in for it specifically. It’s the most roaring success I could possibly have ever imagined.
And today the pub will open. And tomorrow. And as long as I’m here and can haul my arse downstairs to unbolt the doors, it will carry on opening. Regulars will annoy me with the same terrible jokes, the same songs will play on the jukebox, different ales will fly out of the casks into (hopefully) good WhatPub reviews.
It is what it is and that’s mostly really good, honestly. Just a shame when someone spoils it for everyone, every time that happens.
Hazel