14-05-2025
17 Wild Work Stories, According To Bartenders
If you've ever worked as a bartender, then you've probably dealt with a lot of wild sh*t. So when Reddit user SheZowRaisedByWolves asked: "Bartenders of Reddit, what is the most outrageous thing you've seen during your shift?" I thought it would be interesting to share some of these stories:
"I was managing an upscale Italian restaurant in a fancy San Francisco neighborhood during COVID. I walk outside to our patio and notice a patron reaching over the divide, trying to hand something to the couple sitting in the next booth. I speed walk over and notice that this man's pants are down to his knees (??), and the man in the next booth is yelling that he's trying to hand them drugs (??). So I find myself telling this pantsless man, 'Let's put on our pants and keep our drugs to ourselves,' which was a sentence I never thought I'd be uttering. COVID was truly wild times."
—cowgoesrowr
"For context: I'm missing the majority of my fingers due to a congenital defect, and it was my first month working as a bartender when I had this convo with a very drunk lady. Me: at the bar, pouring drinks. Lady: 'Hey, I have a question I can't stop thinking about.' Me: 'Sure, go ahead.' Lady: 'Are you a lesbian?' Me: 'Nope.' Lady: 'Thank god because you don't have fingers.' Lmaooooo, I've never laughed so hard in my life, and my coworker was in tears too. It's been nearly five years, and I still think about this. Best part was is this was only at about 1 p.m. — gotta love bottomless brunch."
"I found out that all the liquor was bootlegged and just dumped into bottles with brand names. Nobody restocked except for the boss."
—JuicySpark"I saw the boss run a $4 bottle of vodka through a Brita water filter over and over. Then magically it became 'Top Shelf.'"—EsotericRexx
"It's been a few years since I bartended, but we had to kick a guy out once, and he came back like half an hour later and punched through the WIRE REINFORCED GLASS in the front door. Tore his hand and wrist to shit; he wound up waiting on the curb for both police and ambulance to arrive. A 24-hour emergency glass repair company had the window replaced by the time we closed."
"My mom was a bartender, and she told me a few stories from it. 1: She went to break up a fight between two biker groups, and she ended up getting flipped/thrown, and her leg got caught in a ceiling fan. She broke her leg, but stopped the fight."
"2: She got her own drink laced with LSD one night while working by someone she knew. 3: Before Queen got super famous, they played a show at her bar and afterwards, came up and asked her if they could throw an after party, and it was just Queen, like 50 people, and her and another bartender. Someone from Queen may have fucked my mother, and I ain't even mad… she said, 'They were super nice guys who just wanted to have a fun time, not a wild party.'"—Leather-Animal-8342
"Early 2000s cattleman's convention at a resort. 6'6' easily 300lb cowboy drinking for several hours. Knocked over a table and a waitress. Staggered up to the bar wanting more pitchers of beer. Cut him off and attempted to give him anything else, like soda, juice, or coffee. Cowboy becomes irate, his buddies egging him on. Explain to him that I could lose my liquor license and the bar's as well. He grabs me by the throat and pulls me over the bar, yelling, 'I don't need some punk telling me how much I can or can't drink!', while doing his best 'Homer Simpson choking out Bart.' Security steps in, and it takes six of them to take him down. The manager comes by to ask what happened. I told him, and he yells at me because 'They're here for a convention! If they don't spend money here, they'll just go somewhere else!' I was ready to quit. I had a mark of his handprint around my throat for three days. Never saw them again."
"We had a guy who was a puker. One night, at last call, he pounded a beer so he could get one more, but immediately after pounding it, he puked it back up into the pint glass. Being wasted, he wanted another one and re-pounded his puke/beer. Puker was a friend of a friend. He and my friend were in the same frat, and he told me a story of his legendary puking. One night, while playing Edward Fortyhands, he finished one of his beers and had to puke. Instead of puking on the floor, he put the empty bottle up to his mouth and puked back into it. He swore to God that he didn't spill a drop."
—popcornpoops
"Old man fights! Torn between the 75-year-old vs the 60-year-old with half a foot or the same 75-year-old choking out an 80-year-old cartoon style."
"A bachelor party. One of the entertainers had a disturbing and impressive party trick involving ping pong balls. Stopped booking bachelor parties after that one."
—ShutUpJane
"My boss emptied all the drip trays into a jug at the end of the night and drank it."
"I worked at a club/pub in London back in like 2004. This pub was famous for being the birthplace of Drum and Bass music (although that was very much disputed). Every Friday or Saturday night, there would be a team of about 10 bouncers, and they were absolutely needed. One night, about 20 coked-up lads were denied entry, and a mass brawl ensued between them and the bouncers. I was working behind the bar. After the brawl was over (the bouncers maintained their unbeaten record, of course), one of the bouncers casually sauntered over to the bar, slowly sat down, and calmly said in a thick Jamaican accent, 'Give me a brandy, I've just been stabbed.'
"We called an ambulance, and he waited for the ambulance, just sipping his brandy like we were all making a fuss over was only when the paramedics came in that he deigned to open the front of his jacket to reveal a six-inch knife stuck five and a half inches deep into his chest. The paramedics, who had seemed quite calm until now, sprang into frantic action. I remember the bouncer being stretchered out, still with a completely bemused and calm expression."—Maud_Ford
"A fight started between two drunks outside my bar. Smaller guy runs back into the joint while I'm collecting empties, shouting that 'he's got a gun.' Dummy me stands in front of a glass door to lock it, while the dude runs up to the door with a gun in his hand. I'm looking straight at him. A woman at the bar I was flirting with shouts at me, 'What the hell are you doing?' And I thought, 'Wait, what?' And jumped out of the way."
"I worked at an outdoor bar at the beach. Local crowd, live music most nights, dance floor, it was a fun spot. One night, a woman, in her mid-thirties if I had to guess, was out with coworkers and had been pounding tequila shots. A song came on and she said, 'Oh, I love this song!' and got up to dance. While dancing, she had the liquid courage to attempt a backflip for some reason, but landed on her head and started screaming/writhing in agony. I had to call an ambulance, and as far as I know, she ended up fine. The part I remember most was one of her friends consoling her on the ground and going, 'You're okay! You always crush the backflip, you must have slipped.'"
—CakieFickflip
"Seen a woman who was on her 'time of the month' literally stand up, take off her pad, sit down, and bleed onto the chair, trailing it through the floor. We had to close a 24-hour bar for two days for hazmat cleaning (I work in a Vegas casino)."
"Saw a guy pouring his freshly served beer into his shoe and chucking it before putting the loafer back on his foot. Still really confused about that."
—ninounin
"I work at a lovely cocktail bar, and we had a private hire. At the end of the night, we found a lobster in one of the urinals. Keep in mind, we don't serve food, only small snacks. So no one had any idea how it got in there."
"Only did the gig for six months at a local pub, but this still sticks out in my mind, well over a decade later. Two different bachelorette parties came in around the same time to pregame a bit before heading to the clubs, and both brides-to-be traded snotty comments. I got them to separate by giving one group complimentary access to the normally paid-for pool table in one corner, and setting up the other group with a dartboard in the pub's opposite corner. Plenty of separation between the two with something to distract them. Job done, right? ...Right? Nope."
"I'd convinced both groups not to grab pitchers of mixed drinks to share and steered them towards light ABV drinks, so they wouldn't get too drunk and rowdy before they left for the clubs and stopped being my problem (because I have basic brains and can recognize problems in the making).However, my fellow bartender Melissa saw two groups of women with plenty of cash to spend and tip with, and served both with several rounds of mixed shooters, which were mostly either at 40% ABV or above 30% at the tamest. I was not made aware of this until we dealt with the aftermath.I was deep frying a pound of hot wings in the galley kitchen for one of my regulars, Steve, when I heard World War 3 start and ran out of the kitchen. My distraction had failed, and both groups had decided that the perfect thing to make the night better was to scream at each other about silly high school drama, even the youngest of them should have outgrown, then almost simultaneously decided that if volume wasn't going to win, then by God, violence would!Bridal Party A had the close-range advantage with their pool cues while Bridal Party B had the ranged advantage with their darts, even if they had limited ammunition. The entire seating area quickly turned into a chaotic battlefield of hair-pulling and clothes-tearing in some places, while one of the more pragmatic individuals from Group A used her pool cue like a spear to jab someone in Group B in the stomach hard enough that she puked up maybe $30 worth of the MVP on Group B's side was actually hanging back with a fistful of darts and was actively chucking them into the fight whenever she saw an opportunity. Mostly, she missed and her few hits were as equally likely to hit friend versus foe, but hey, she gave it her best shot and played things smart enough that later, when everything was put to a stop, she was the only one without visible bruises, cuts, clothing damage, or even a drink splashed in her face or on her fiercest part of the battle was the two generals themselves: both brides grappling and fighting like their lives were on the line instead of it just being a silly bar fight between two groups of friends who had some silly rivalry years ago about silly teenage bullshit. At one point, they were both choking each other like they were in a silent agreement that the first one to tap or pass out was the loser, and that part of their duel only got interrupted when Bride A tripped over a woman on the ground from Group B, and they both lost their grip on the other when they crashed to the and I crouched behind the bar like it was a foxhole and were quickly joined by Steve as his wings burned in the deep fryer and he gripped his pint of Budweiser like a lifeline. Melissa had already called 911 so we just stayed hunkered while I wondered how much of a pain in the ass it was going to be to clean up the carnage once the fierce battle was the cops came through the door, both sides pretty much froze in place within a second or two.I'll keep the conclusion short, because it was all fairly quiet and mundane. Both parties got a trip to the cop shop. I don't know what they got charged with, but I do know they all got at least two or three. I gave the cops a copy of the security footage, but the equipment was crappy and low-res enough that even watching it back a couple times there was no way to say which side started we gave our statements and the cops left, I locked the door but told Steve to grab a seat. I made him a fresh batch of wings and poured him a pint and comped his entire bill on top. Dude already had the wide-eyed look of a man who'd found God in the face of violence no normal man should face, so I let him eat his wings while Melissa and I did our best to clean up the debris from Bride War 2.I had the carpet cleaner out to clean up the puke from the Pool Cue victim and was wondering out loud how she snuck that many shots in her tiny purse when Melissa admitted she'd brought both parties a few rounds of shooters. So Melissa cleaned up the puke while I closed up the kitchen, bar, and till so we could lock up and leave and pretend the entire day was all a bad fever dream.I unlocked the front door, and Steve walked away with a belly full of wings and a thousand-yard stare, and Melissa and I just went our own way home. It was probably the biggest brawl we'd seen, but it was honestly only novel because of the sheer scale of it and the gender of the wasn't surprising to see a quick brawl between a few guys with too much testosterone and Jaegerbombs than common sense, but they were usually so quick and contained that most regulars barely glanced at it and both Melissa and I could clean up the mess and reopen the table or booth in under fifteen minutes with barely a blip in service times."—BlueMikeStu
Bartenders, do you have an outrageous story you want to share? Tell us what happened during one of your shifts in the comments or anonymously in the Google Form below:
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
