Memoirs of a Rideshare Driver: The Bartender and the Michelob Rep
Episode 37 in a series of true rideshare stories
He comes out of the bar pretty toasted. Not in that sloppy way that a lot of downtown drinkers are, but in the way of a seasoned drinker who knows his limit, knows it’s high, and knows he’s just about there.
“How was your night?” I ask him.
“Ohh, it is ready to be over.”
“Celebrating something?”
“No, no… I got into a drinking contest with the Michelob rep.”
I laugh. “A beer rep doesn’t sound like somebody I’d want to get into a drinking contest with.”
“Well, I’m a bartender, so I thought it’d be a fair fight.”
I instantly love this story. It sounds like a folktale, an urban legend, a story joke. Dale, tell that one about the bartender and the Michelob rep who get in a drinking match.
“Who won?” I ask.
“Well, she could hold her own. I’ll say that much.”
“Does that mean she beat you?”
“In the first round, she did,” he says. “We were drinking these things that turned out to basically be White Russians. I didn’t realize we were gonna go that hard and I couldn’t keep up. But the second round was shotgunning PBRs—the sixteens, not the twelves. That’s more in my comfort zone, so I turned it around on her there.”
My God! This story keeps getting better. It even comes in a classic, three-part structure. The Three Little Pigs, Three Billy Goats Gruff, Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Since we were babies, we’ve been conditioned into loving the rule of threes. Already I can hear this story in a classic joke structure. A bartender and a Michelob rep get into a drinking contest. She wins the first round because she can drink harder. He wins the second because he can drink faster…
We’re barreling toward the punchline! Don’t let us down now!
“And round three?” I ask, on pins and needles.
“Oh, that was enough. I was like, ‘Damn, I better call it after that.’”
I slump in my seat. What the hell kind of story is this? Two rounds?! The genie never offers two wishes! The farmer never has two daughters! Two ethnicities don’t walk into a bar! You need the third one! The third one’s the punchline, or the moral! It’s the whole fucking point! You can’t build the suspense right up to a fever pitch and then just bring the curtain down without relieving the tension! They tried that with The Sopranos and people were pissed!
“That’s it?” I ask. “You can’t just leave it there. One round each, with no clear winner? You need a tie-breaker.”
“Well, I gave her my number,” he says. “If she wants a tie-breaker, she can call me.”
Suddenly I like this story after all. Son of a bitch knew exactly what he was doing.
Memoirs of a Rideshare Driver is a series that tells true stories of my 10,000+ trips as a rideshare driver. I will post them every Monday.
gave me a good chuckle