Day Shifts

Working a day shift as a bartender generally requires little more than a pulse. If one were to take a pub crawl throughout the city of Philadelphia on any given weekday they'd be treated to a fascinating display of creatures who are visibly uncomfortable being sober & exposed to light...
I bartend a day shift every tuesday because it ensures that i'm up early at least once a week but it also proves to be profitable as the bar/restaraunt i work at does a solid lunch of salads & designer sandwiches that caters to a center city crowd of office workers. From 12:00 to 2:00 its turn & burn those tables as quick as you can til the remaining afternoon gives way to a handful of stragglers usually consisting of talkative beer geeks starved for attention. Todays guests were no exception...
After lunch the food runner Julius told me that him & one of the other bartenders, Gerrardo, were gonna move to San Francisco in two years. Julius lived out there briefly about ten years ago & said its like fucking disney land. He said complete strangers approach you on the street & say hello & ask how your doing without even wanting anything. Wow, California man...
They're both in their early thirties like me & that got me thinking that even at this stage in my life I could be do for a change of scenery as well. To think at my age my father had six kids & was already into his second deadend career just shows how much these times been a changin...
My dreams of free love & walking up steep hills were interrupted as black Mike came barrelling up the stairs drunker then a motherfucker. A mountain of a man at 6'6" & well over 300lbs, he was a cook at one of the bars i use to work at. He's a big lovable guy who has a bit of drinking problem as in he use to not show up for work days at a time while out on a bender. He would, without fail, take an annual unannounced christmas vacation for a week at the round house on disorderly conduct charges. What a creature of habit...
"yo batman, whats up?", he shouts as he rounds the top of the stairs leaving the sparse happy hour crowd contemplating an escape down the the steps,
"whats up wit all dese niggas up here?"
He then procedes to wedge himself between a couple at the end of the bar, now frozen with genuine fear as this enormous black man towers over them, his eyes hungrily fixed upon the womans' cleavage. Before the puddle of drool forming at side of his lips starts to drip, I round the bar & cautiously ask Mike to come down stairs with me. Thankfully he follows becuase if decieded he was gonna sit down & have a pint then there was nothing that me or the 32nd precient could do about it. We reached the outside & he asks me, with a look that portrayed such a genuine sadness & feeling of rejection that I thought for a moment about inviting him back up,
"are you kicking me out batman?"
I explain that he's welcomed back anytime, on the condition he hadn't priorly been marinating in two bottles of bankers' club vodka. He swallows me in his arms, kisses me on top of the head, "ok batman, i'll come see you another time" & staggers away into the rush hour traffic...
Back upstairs, I thank Deon, one of our cooks who had been enjoying an after work cocktail at the bar, for so couragously deceiding to watch my back from all the way in the safety of the kitchen...
Deon has enough on his mind though. Already a single father of three, his current girlfriend, who just two months ago gave birth to his fourth child, informed him today that she had joined the Navy while walking past a recruiting office on the way home from shoe shopping. "The Navy?" he mutters to himself, completely baffled, "The Navy?", the lines of his brow furrowing deeper each time he repeats those two words, "The Navy?", his voice rising til finally he screams out & exclaims, "She can't even swim!".