Jeff Burkhart: ‘Don’t you know who I am?’ No, I don’t

The holidays are in full swing. And there they are: all the people I don’t know. When you have worked full time at a place for years, you get to know a lot of people. And then when you’re paired with someone who works the nights that you don’t, together you know all the regulars.

“I come here all the time,” said the person neither of us recognized.

“All the time” can mean a lot of things. That can mean two times in the last five years, every fourth Tuesday or even every single day. We get all those types all the time.

That saying ranks right up there with “Don’t you know who I am?” If you have to say things like that, then you probably aren’t who you think you are here.

Now, she hadn’t said that because she wanted us to know that specifically. She said it because she wanted us to do something other than what we normally do.

“I shop here all the time,” you hear people say at the grocery store all the time, as if that allowed for them some special rights or privileges. Look around you, everyone else shops here, too.

The woman in question had snuck into a seat at the bar, while the other normal, polite people had stood back and waited their turn. It now had devolved into an argument over who had been there first — until it was proven that she hadn’t been. Then the argument changed; first it was “I didn’t know,” and then it was “This isn’t fair” and then “You guys are rude.” It’s always the same. Some people just want what they want, and they don’t care what they have to say or do in order to get it.

I have seen people scream, cry, stomp around, threaten, curse and threaten again. And then if they do manage to get what they want — sometimes simply because it was going to happen anyway — they act as if they hadn’t done any of those things.

“How’s your night going?” they will ask the very person who they just called an idiot four minutes before, as if that person couldn’t possibly remember that.

But again, it’s about results. And that result is getting what they want. The problem is that sometimes the people arguing on behalf of the people who are in fact “next” do the worst thing possible. They don’t stand up for themselves. And then it becomes impossible for service people to stand up for them. And then the dominoes start falling.

“Wait, we were next,” they sometimes say when the next seat opens up.

Well, you were. But you didn’t let us advocate for you. Now the people behind you are mad at us, and so are the people behind them. It’s like a four-way stop. If you don’t do what you’re supposed to do — like go when it’s your turn — then all of a sudden everything breaks down. And then everybody gets upset, except, of course, the person who caused the problem by upsetting the system. They will sit there blithely while argument after argument ensues all around them as if nothing has happened.

I’m sure people out there will say that nobody will do that. And my counterargument is: almost to a person, everyone who cheats to get something will definitely take the reward for their cheating. And they will do it as if they didn’t cheat. They will hold up the undeserved trophy, take the supervisory position or sit on the barstool or at that table that they know they shouldn’t have gotten as if they deserved it all along. And then they will act as if you too should go along with it. Don’t believe me? Just sit at a busy counter, busy bar or even at a busy intersection during this holiday season just for a little while, and I guarantee that you will see it.

People need to stand up for themselves, and they really need to do it when someone else is advocating for them. There’s nothing like being hung out to dry by somebody, only to have that same person blame you for the situation just a few minutes later. Just ask any host, bartender, clerk or salesperson, especially during the holidays — they’ll tell you.

Leaving me with these thoughts

• Many people don’t want a fair fight; they want to punch someone who can’t punch back. And that’s where service people often come in.

• They say you shouldn’t punch down, that you should only punch up. My question is, why the punching at all?

• If you won’t stand up for your own rights but expect someone else to do it for you, then you are the worst kind of hypocrite there is.

• The endless search for the justification of personal selfishness is the greatest moral dilemma of our time. That, or a shaken Manhattan.

Jeff Burkhart is the author of “Twenty Years Behind Bars: The Spirited Adventures of a Real Bartender, Vol. I and II,” the host of the Barfly Podcast on iTunes (as seen in the NY Times) and an award-winning bartender at a local restaurant. Follow him at jeffburkhart.net and contact him at jeffbarflyIJ@outlook.com