Profanity Leprechauns

All told, my weekend was good personally, but rather rocky professionally.  Where I get very few complaints to management on the whole, I had four over the weekend.  The first one was the best.

It's Friday night, around 10:45 or so.  I'm working in Atlantis, which is a 70s and 80s room -- disco, retro, party rock -- with a decent-sized dance floor.  I'm looking over the room, which is still trying to figure out if they want to dance or not even after I've tossed a couple of A-List sets (three - five songs that should guarantee at least a half-filled floor) out there.  That's when I see a woman in her late 40s / early 50s waving her arms trying to get my attention.  I motion her over to the booth.

She walks up, then holds a dollar bill between her hands and snaps it a few times.  "This is a dollar bill!  Play 'Pussy Control' by Prince!"

Now, I actually discarded the first three responses that came to mind.  They were:

"Lady, unless a coin slot was installed in my ass when I wasn't looking, I'm not a fucking jukebox!"
"What would you know about pussy control, bag?"
"Oh, goody!  A dollar!  Now I can have that surgery done!"

Instead, I said, "You can keep your dollar.  I'll play your Prince."

Apparently, the Profanity Leprechaun popped up behind me, because when she complained about me to the manager on deck, I said "Keep your fucking dollar, lady."

No matter how pissed off at a guest, I will never use profanity toards them unless they know me and understand that it's not meant in a harmful way (whether they recognize it or not).  That said, there's no way I'm playing "Pussy Control" that early, with that few people dancing.  It's a wasted song, and I despise repeating music.  There's over two decades of stuff I can play, and there's no need to repeat anything. 

You missed your song?  Sorry.  Should have been here when I played it.  Get here sooner next time.

You can't stay around that long?  Then you're not spending any more money at my bar, which means you're useless to me.  One of my first nightclub managers taught me something I've always tried to adhere to: "there's no bar on the dance floor."

The other three complaints weren't nearly as interesting -- a bachlorette didn't like the brusque treatment, meaning she didn't get priority over the other 200 people in the room, or the three other bachlorette parties already there; a girl couldn't understand how telling me the music I was playing sucked would make me want to ignore her; a guy who wanted to hear "Under The Bridge" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers at 12:15 am couldn't understand why I didn't want to slow the room down just for him.

There are times when I purely love my job -- the room is firing on all cylinders, the guests are having a good time, the bartenders and waitstaff are making great money, and management's happy because no one's up in anyone's grill.  It seems like those times are fewer and further between for me.

Comments

[Katy]

Leemer and I tried to come see you, we really did, but my roommate's car was parked behind mine, and she left the house with her keys. Damn her!