Bartenders Share Their Craziest Drunk Customer Stories

Some customers don't realize how much they've had to drink until it's too late, and then the bartender has to deal with it. Here are stories of the craziest drunk customers bartenders have ever encountered.

“He Throws Me A Suspicious Glance And…”

“I worked in a dive bar once that got a decent mix of underage drinkers, homeless people, and lunatics. One day this guy orders our $3 draft. I pour it, set it down on a coaster in front of him. The guy–I kid you not–takes a straw from the holder and pulls that trick where you seal it with your finger. He pauses to throw me this suspicious glance, and then he takes the straw out and tastes it. The guy slowly pushes the coaster back across the bar with the tips of his fingers and says, ‘I’m not drinking this. You put arsenic in it.’ He was 100% serious. Another time, an older lady wanders into the bar. Orders a glass of Cabernet. I pour her the wine, but a few minutes later, I see she’s not touching it. I ask her if everything was okay and she leans forward and tells me that she’s peed her pants. Before I can react or do anything, she goes, ‘That’s okay, I can fix it,’ and whips off her freaking pants — in the middle of the bar.”

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The Office Holiday Party Got A Little Too Friendly

“One office came to our place for a Christmas party. We’re a wine bar in the city. One of the girls started kissing the other for a dare, then she left that girl and started with another one even though it wasn’t part of the dare, and the other one went and kissed another one, and they all went around kissing each other. The guys from the Christmas party just stood there in awe, with their mouths wide open.”

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The Liquor Rep Shouldn’t Have Left His Card

“When I bartended in San Francisco, I remember this guy (who happened to be a liquor rep from Southern California, gave us his card and everything) got super trashed at my bar. It’s a pretty nice place, but we had really nice booze and cocktails so it was easy to go overboard. Anyway, he goes to the restroom, which we only have one for each gender. It was busy so it’s not like this was conspicuous, and we were pretty aware that lots of drugs/sex/etc probably happened in there, but we kept it tidy. Well, what do you know, he’s in there for too long. Somehow my manager had lost or didn’t remember where the spare key was. We actually had a regular customer (who bartended elsewhere on the street) pick the lock with a paper clip. Long story short, this guy is passed out in there, with the mirror (which was wall-mounted) lying flat on the ground with what appears to be urine all over it. He was on the john with his pants down. The conclusion we drew was he was on some sort of drugs and decided he wanted to watch himself piss. I’ve heard of this kind of thing on hallucinogens but I can’t imagine he was tripping at a packed bar, but who knows. Anyway, we get him put together as best we can, kick him out, then he acts super offended and tries to fight my manager, but we finally get him to leave. Since we had his business card, my General Manager calls his boss the next day and demands that they pay for the mirror and whatever other damages, and of course that his behavior makes us definitely not want to buy whatever brand he was hocking at that time.”

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Tennis Ladies Aren’t So Graceful With A Few Appletinis In Them

“I used to work at a restaurant near a pretty affluent neighborhood before the economy went under in 2008. We were near the local tennis club so having these trophy wives in and swooning over their tennis pro was not uncommon. One day 4 of the tennis ladies come in for appletinis. They down the first couple relatively quickly and take their third round and walk away from the bar. I assume they’re heading out to smoke but they weren’t. Turns out they went to hang out at the other side of the restaurant, which is closed between lunch and dinner. I found out when I overheard someone talking about two women going at it in one of the booths. Of course, everyone made sure to get an eyeful of live girl on girl action. But that was quickly interrupted by the fact that the blonde was not feeling well. They stepped outside and I figured they would come inside, pay their tab, and that would be the end of that. They came back inside, 3 girls carrying one right into the bathroom. As soon as I saw it happen I knew I would have so much to clean up. And sure enough, when they left the bathroom and I was attending other bar guests, one of the servers coming on for the dinner shift was the first to see it. Poop. Poop everywhere. Literal feces on the floor, on the walls, it was terrible. I will be in that server’s debt forever because she wasn’t scared to clean it. She just said ‘I’ll handle it’ and did. I figured it was over, and again I was wrong. The manager who came on for the night shift was taking a walk around the restaurant when he saw it. Poop. Poop again. Poop on the floor in the game room of the restaurant. We rewound the cameras to see how this could’ve happened. It seems that while she was being carried in she couldn’t hold her poop and it just started coming out and she kinda shook her leg a little to get it out of her underwear. We named her Poopy Pants and told the story to every new server. Did she stop coming around? Yeah, for a while, but then she just started coming around again with her kids as if nothing ever happened. If you poop your pants in a restaurant everyone will know about it and it will never be safe to return.”

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He Will Never Live Down Being “T-Rex”

“My old, overly friendly boss urged us to come out from the bar to hug the ladies and shake hands with the men. One day I was urged to hug an extremely fat woman who then complained to my boss that my arms were too short to fit around her. She called me a little T-Rex. Now people jokingly call me J-Rex, leave dinosaur related things in my tip jar and walk around like T-rexes. One time I looked up from my drink mixing and someone had convinced a group of 7 teenagers to parade back and forth like T-Rex in front of the large windows at the front of the restaurant. This has been happening for years. I moved to the bar down the street after about a year and it followed me.”

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Can’t Trust The Agents

“Once came across a twenty-something guy blocking anyone from entering our downstairs arcade room. He was just standing in the doorway with his arms crossed doing the drunk sway and when I tried to go around him he just moved to the left or right to block me, while maintaining alpha eye contact. I asked him why he wasn’t letting me in and he says, ‘It’s a security issue.’ I said, ‘Well I work here, can I get by?’ to which he responds, ‘I work here too.’ The guy’s pupils are the size of dinner plates, I realize. I say, ‘Okay,’ then start heading back upstairs, and he follows me sort of menacingly maybe halfway up the stairs before going back to the doorway. I get some guys from the kitchen to help me out and we do our best to just keep the guy calmly detained in the arcade room until the police arrive to sort things out. While we waited for the cops, the guy said something about some group of people trying to poison him, and he referred to me and my coworkers as ‘agents’ a couple of times. I felt pretty bad for the guy after that. Cops came and I think helped him find some friends who he’d been separated from.”

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All Money In The Pocket

“I had a guy come in years ago now. He sits down, Friday afternoon at about 3 pm. The guy looks exhausted, like, just worked 4 days straight exhausted. Sits down, asks for a pint. £3.50. Hands me a £20 and says to keep the change. I realise he’s not from these parts, and tell him a £16.50 tip is too much. Twenty minutes later, same deal. ‘Keep the change!’ So I do. By the end of the night, this guy had gone back to his hotel twice, come back with money twice, and spent an absolute fortune. He ended up tipping me £220 AND $400, because he ran out of pounds, so went back to his hotel to get dollars. A stack of $100 bills. Easily $10k. Asks if I know where he can get coke. Yup. Tips me for knowing a guy. Asks if he can swap dollars for pounds. The guy who ran a bar next door was going to Florida in two weeks, so my customer tips me again for hooking him up with his very own currency exchange at this time of night. On, and on, and on. Then he disappears. Not a trace of him. 18 months later, I’m working the Monday night at my bar and he walks in again. We got absolutely wrecked up on booze together, I got him 4/5g of coke, we hit the casino, etc. Woke up the next morning absolutely hammered with an extra £400-500 in my pocket. Next time he visited he brought me a £450 watch, and put a grand in my account, telling me to take the weekend off and party with him. Great weekend. He calls me up not long after the watch event saying he’s looking to buy a house/apartment in my city, would I be able to scout locations for him while he’s working? Before calling again a couple weeks later to ask if I’d consider buying a place for him since he wasn’t a resident in the country. This all sounds crazy, but it’s not! The guy was South African and had a killer job offshore, not to mention he seemed to come from old money, too.”

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Having To Do Damage Control Before The Cops Arrived

“Half way through a shift a wasted guy walks up and tries to get a table, he was turned away, and I was informed of it. Cool, no problem. Fast forward to about 10, I’m out back having a smoke. A server comes and gets me and tells me the guy is back and won’t leave and is sitting at the bar. So I head back to the bar and see the guy. Now it’s important to note that the bar in question is in a good area but it’s known for its alternative people. There are some rougher patrons that are good and loyal, but are hard to get to know.

So I get to the bar and see the guy. He’s sitting there swaying. I walk up and say, ‘Sorry buddy, can’t serve you,’ but he insists. So I walk around the bar. I tap him on the shoulder and say, ‘You were turned away before, I’m not gonna serve you, you’ve gotta leave,’ but he insists. So I grab his shoulder to turn him around and he just latches onto the bar. At this point, with a full bar in the middle of dinner service, I see all the regulars just watching me to see how I will handle it. So I made a decision. I stood behind him and quickly put him into a full Nelson and wrestled him out of the bar. As I get him across the threshold of the front door he breaks free, turns, and throws a punch. I put an elbow up and block it, and push him back. At this point, 5 regulars blast by me and grab this guy.

In the front of the restaurant is a 7 foot by 10 foot window which is a single piece of glass. Behind the window are three tables. As he is being pulled past the front of the building, he lashes out and punches the window and shatters the whole thing, showering all the customers in glass. At this point, I’ve been informed that the cops are on the way and none of the customers are hurt. I’m just rushing around doing damage control cleaning glass, apologising, trying to get the atmosphere back. Out of the corner of my eye, I look across the street and see my customers absolutely tuning this guy up. Just absolutely stomping him. About a minute before the cops come they bring him back over and sit him down. The cops come, everyone corroborates my story. They ask what happened to him, and I say I was occupied. The customers say he fell, and say no more. Of course, I would rather things had turned out differently but the guy had a history of assault and public disorder and broke parole so I don’t feel that badly about it.”

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“We Can Take ‘Em”

“I was a server at a tropical themed burger joint. One night we had a couple of guys show up late, and they were hammered. One guy was 50 or so, and the other was maybe 65. The bartender slipped them a couple of dummy drinks, and we figured they would finish up and be on their way. Instead one of the guys threw his glass across the bar. The manager, me, and one of the cooks confronted them and asked them to leave. We are all in our 20’s at this time, and none of us were under 200 lbs. These two guys stand up, and the younger guy says, ‘We can take ’em.’ Then the 65-year-old stumbled sideways, knocked over two tables, and cracked his head on the floor. Our host called the police, and the younger guy kept running his mouth while his buddy was bleeding out. In the end, the younger guy got arrested, and the older guy ended up being taken to the hospital in an ambulance. When I left for the night I noticed that the 15-year-old Ford Escort they arrived in wasn’t even parked in a space. They parked in the middle of the driving lane, so we had their car towed. One of the cops came back a month later to eat, and he told us the older guy almost died from the head trauma, and the younger guy was on parole and eventually, he ended up back in prison.”

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He Made His Last Margarita Extra “Special” After Getting Stiffed

“Years ago I was a bartender for a local bar, a mostly awesome job where the money was decent and the beer flowed freely, though every now and again you would encounter some pretty rude people. This is a tale of one of those people: I fondly recall this one time where I had this guy come in and sit at my bar during a slow spell in the day. The bar top was empty so he had the whole thing to himself and my undivided attention. I remember him saying how he had shown up a bit earlier than his date for the night, and how he wanted to knock back a few to help ease the nerves. A fairly common request. I remember his drink order; he wanted a premium margarita with top shelf ingredients, blended, with extra salt on the rim. I whipped up his drink, he complimented its deliciousness, and proceeded to guzzle it fairly quickly over the course of around 20 minutes. He ordered another, standard procedure. I figured what’s the harm, his date’s on the way, nothing wrong with a bit of liquid courage. So I mix up his second drink and my back is turned while I’m watching the blender. As the noise dies down, I hear a familiar -click-click. I turn around to pour his drink into a mug in front of him and see this dude clipping his finger nails right onto the bar top. Hmmm. Not exactly the best place to take care of that, but whatever man. Guess he wants to look good for his date.

So half way through his second drink his date arrives, and this dude wants to close out his tab and get a table. I had a feeling he was a jerk as I hand him the little tray thing with his card and receipt to sign. I make myself busy at the other end of the bar and bid him a good rest of his evening as he and his lady grab a table. I go to pick up the tray and receipt when lo and behold, the guy stiffed me AND left a pile of his disgusting fingernail clippings in the tray. Come on man- you just spent $18 on 2 drinks, and the only tip I got was a handful of your disgusting, gangly nails?? No. I watched the bar ticker closely as the waitress from his section put in the order I recognized: premium margarita, blended, with extra salt. I did what any petty revenger would do; I tossed that pile of his own nail clippings into the blender along with his drink, then blended it up nicely. Then I watched menacingly from a distance as he chugged down his frosty/naily beverage, knowing that was all the tip I needed.”

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A Man Walks Into A Bar With A Monkey Puppet…

“I was working at a local ‘last comic standing’ show at this comedy club. People submitted audio/video of their standup, and the radio station picked 10 people to do 5 minutes each to compete for $1000. One of the contestants was a man who walked into the bar holding a monkey puppet (for real I’m not setting up a joke), wearing a leather vest with no shirt. He walks up and says, ‘Listen bro, my house burned down 2 weeks ago, my dogs died and my girlfriend left me, I have no money you gotta hook up me with a free drink.’ The contestants get 1 free drink, so I ‘hook him up’ but he wants another. I ask him for a credit card to open a tab, he provides one and starts ordering shots for people around him. Eventually, it’s his turn on stage. His full act was him making the monkey lip sync to ‘This Land Is Your Land’ by Woody Guthrie. He gets off stage and leaves the club. I kinda felt bad before remembering his tab was still open. I decide to run his card and SPOILER ALERT, it was declined. I send the bouncers outside to go look for him, and I guess he was just having a cigarette. I ask for another form of payment and he admits he has no money. My manager didn’t want to deal with police, so she had the bouncers ask him to leave. He apologized and left. 20 minutes later I turn and see him at the end of the bar waving me over. This dude seriously came back and asked for another drink. At one point he actually got on his knees with tears in his eyes. I kept asking him to leave, reminding him he already got $90 worth of free drinks and the cops are called. They ask him to step outside, he turns to me and asks for another drink. This goes on for about 5 minutes before he attempts to kick the lamp 3 feet above his head to prove that he could ‘whoop my butt, punk.’ Mid-kick they tase him right in the butt. POP! I guess they hit a sweet spot because he peed his pants also. Weeks later he called the club looking for his monkey.”

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“I Don’t Know What’s Crazier, The Guy Shredding His Own Face, Or…”

“A famous author dated one of our regulars and came in to party with her one night. At the time, he had several death threats hanging over his head, so the police had issued him two bodyguards – two burly fellas in athletic clothing, obviously armed. Drank a lot of Cola Zero, but whatever. Night goes as usual, but one odd, drunk customer decides that smashing a bottle in his own face was a brilliant idea. Blood and glass everywhere. Me and another guy drag him out of the main room to the toilets, while others fetch the first aid kit and clean the floor. The two bodyguards go full on defcon 1, securing the author and one of them very aggressively asks me who did this. I reply he did it to himself. The bodyguard looked me straight in the eyes and said, ‘What a complete idiot.’ I don’t know what the craziest part is – a guy absolutely shredding his own face, or two policemen believing some random guys dragging a gory gent out of a bar, saying he did it to himself.”

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Fine By Me

“This happened to me when I worked in a rather ‘country’ bar in Virginia. A snowstorm was about to hit and management was planning on closing shop but asked for a couple people to stay on for a couple hours before heading out. I lived right down the road so I volunteered, and I’m glad I did. This one guy, who looked like he might have already had a few, ripped a twenty dollar bill in half, gave me one half of it, and told me I’d get the other half if I rang the bell we had behind our bar (we rang it when we got awesome tips). He kept true to his promise and continued suit with more twenties, fifties, and eventually a hundred dollar bill. I made over $400 in an hour and a half, just by ringing a simple bell, and got to enjoy a nice snowstorm at home. Easiest money I’ve ever made. Thank you, drunk guy.”

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“Down The Hatch!”

“I was working this country wedding a few years ago. And by country, I mean country: out on their land, giant tents, country band, guns, and lots of Jack! Anyway, the people there were nice as the day is long and overall it was a lot of fun, BUT, the groom’s brother was a proper country boy – about 6’5 and twice the width in the shoulders of a normal man. During the wedding, he was so happy for his brother, and basically carried this giant bottle of Jack with him and drank a ton for the newlyweds with everyone he stopped to talk to. At some point, he comes up to his brother the groom, grabs him by the shoulders and loudly proclaims, ‘Down the hatch,’ at which the groom tried protesting telling him that it’s not fitting for him to get drunk. Oh not so fast, the giant simply holds his brother tighter, essentially sticks a bottle down grooms throat and shakes both groom and the bottle, effectively pouring a triple down guy’s throat. They laugh it off and the night goes on. At the end of the night as we’re packing up the giant comes up to us, hands us a $20 tip each and tells us what a wonderful job we’ve done. Then he looks at me, at the bottle and asks that I drink for the newlywed. I tell him that I can’t (I am the manager) and that it isn’t fitting for me to drink on the job. He then gently grabs me by the shoulder and says, ‘Down the hatchet.’ And that’s how I got drunk at the job because I was scared by a man 1.5 my size would shake the booze into me regardless of whether I wanted to or not.”

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“She Reaches Up To My Face And…”

“I used to work in a fancy upmarket restaurant/pub as a bartender during university. Usually, the place was fairly posh and we once had Maroon 5 in (our hard as nails manager became a pile of giggly fangirl when he saw Adam Levine) – but I digress. One Saturday night, we had a party of Australian chiropractors – they booked out the entire place. There was a dance floor, Boney M impersonator, champagne and wine up the wazoo – the works. Naturally, everyone gets plastered and I get asked if I like cricket a lot (I’m Indian and I don’t), asked to sing songs with them (I sang land down under) and basically, the lot of them were very pally (Aussies, you never know what to expect.) End of the night, there’s a very attractive blonde lady that has been knocking down G&T’s like they were going to ban the stuff for hours at the bar. She’s been progressively getting worse as the night goes on and in the end, it turns out she was a call girl who one chiropractor had taken to the party and then immediately forgotten about. She’s there when we’re closing up and cleaning. The manager tells me to get her a cab. I escort the call girl outside and she reaches up to my face, feels my beard, grabs a hold of my ear and says, and I paraphrase, ‘DUN let anywon tell yu what you shud du, hear me?’ Strokes the beard again and gets into the cab. I often think of her.”

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He Did His Rain Dance

“My favourite story is when it rained. It had been unseasonably warm (like 30C, we’re British, not used to the heat) for a good two weeks, and one day the heavens opened out of nowhere. Never seen rain come down like it. I pointed it out to one of the regulars. At this point, he screamed, ripped his shirt off and ran outside in just his shorts and started dancing. About 2 minutes later, the rain stops as suddenly as it started. He walks back in, puts his shirt back on and continues drinking his pint as if nothing had ever happened. He was an otherwise normal bloke, saw him every week for all the time I worked there. I guess the heat made him crazy.”

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