You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Customer Service.
We nornally hear how bad it is.
Well this is a story of how good it can be.
And it can be that good simply because one person makes it happen.
It’s a frozen tundra kind of night.
The wind is howling and the wind chill is hovering in the 20’s.
If the wind could speak, it would sound demonic. It would be deep and foreboding.
“I am the winds of death. I am the cold of eternity. I am going to freeze your soul. Submit to me.”
When the wind threatens you with the voice of darth Vader, that is not a friendly wind.
As I search for a parking spot, I notice the sidewalks in this sleepy burg are all but rolled up.
“What the ….” I mutter.
I shouldn’t be surprised. This is a town where a clog festival is excitement. This is a town where Christmas lights hung on the lamp posts makes news.
So It’s 11 pm. It’s a Friday night. I just want an adult beverage and a sandwich.
Surely, some place is open.
Not in sleepy-ville.
I park behind my favorite night spot.
“A good parking spot,” I say aloud.
Hmmm. That’s strange. A spot directly behind the bar. That is odd. Maybe it’s the fortuitous winds of luck, I think to myself.
As I begin to parallel park, I see my buddy the bar tender.
He has his coat on and is walking with purpose in his step.
I roll down the window. “Hey Steffano, where you going?”
“Home,” he says with a bounce in his step.
He is wearing a thin coat and I can tell he’s cold.
The air is chilled as it blows in the passenger side window.
“I will kill you,” the wind whispers tossing in daggers of icy air.
I ignore the demonic winter nastiness.
“It’s Friday night? You getting off at 10:50pm?”
“We’re closed, dude. It’s Janaury.”
I stare at him in disbelief. Friday night. 11pm. Closed.
“Sorry man,” he says blowing into his cupped hands.
He bounces off down the alley and disappears into the night.
My options are thin.
“Where too?” my friend asks.
We pull around the corner. I park. I gaze down the deserted street.
The street lights flicker a hazy orange in the dark winter sky.
I see the banners on the light poles flapping angrilly as the wind assaults them.
The options are as thin as a break dancer on World’s Biggest Loser.
Then I see a welcoming light across the street.
The little corner cantina is breathing life.
“Let’s go.”
I park.
We open the doors and the winds of frozen hell pelt us with furiousness.
“I’m not your father Luke,” The evil wind hisses.
My friend shrieks pulling her coat around her shoulders.
“Run,” I scream as if we are suddenly in a movie being chased by invisible ice demons.
We get to the sidewalk and I see humanity within.
I pull open the door.
A manufactured heat explodes around us, forcing the evil cold wind back into the atmoshphere where it will lay in wait for us to leave.
The door closes and the sounds of Led Zeppelin fill my ears.
Suddenly the cold is replaced by smiles, The darkness by neon, the whisper of death by a basketball game on 4 gigantic plasmas.
I see a group of people at the bar. They are jovial, loud, as they pay their bill.
I look at the window.
I see the hours. Friday Close 11pm.
I suddenly am concerned, wondering if this is last call.
“You open?” I ask the bar tender.
“No,” she says politely. “We close at 11pm.”
I look at my watch. It’s 10:58pm.
“But you can order a drink,” she says with a smile that lights up my eyes.
“Really?”
“Sure. I’ve gotta clean up. As long as you don’t mind drinking with me mopping behind the bar.”
She is a friendly face with a lot of cool tatoos with access to a multitude of beer taps.
There doesn’t seem to be a problem.
“Food?,” I query.
“Kitchen is closed.”
I haven’t eaten for almost 12 hours. I feel dizzy. I’m so hungry, I actually think my stomach is chewing its own lining to get protein.
“Damn.”
The woman with the full sleeve of tatooed wild iris’ is all about customer service.
“You like Guacamole?”
“Sure.”
“I can probably get that for you.”
Her eyes are blue and wide and her smile says “all things are possible.”
“Do it,” I say.
She runs to the kitchen.
I hear some hooting and hollering and a muffled roar.
A few minutes later she returns with chips.
She places them before me.
“Here ya go,” she says with an electric bounce in her step. “The guacamole will be up in a moment.”
“Were they mad?”
“I had to shake my T***” for the boys in the back to get your Guac,” she says ringing the order up.
I laugh trying not to notice her Guacamole maker.
Now the hoots and hollers make sense.
“Girls gotta do what a girl’s gotta do,” she says pouring me a Shiner Bock beer.
“You know that beer’s from Texas,” I tell her. “Had a bar tender once try and charge me an import price.”
She looks at the label.
“It’ s a cow town out in the Bermuda Triangle of the Lone Star State. Between San Antonio and Austin and Houston. It’s as imported as Bud.”
She laughs. “Didn’t know all that.”
“I know lots of trivial uselessness.”
She tosses the bottle in the trash.
I sip a beer that coats my throat like warm velvet in Graceland.
It’s been a long hard day. This beer is liquid reward for my brain and my frayed nerves.
I’ve just broken a major story, with national implications. A majore health care conglomerate somehow allowed thousands of customer social security numbers to get onto the internet for any criminal to possibly access.
It should have been an easy story to tell, but it wasn’t.
I had to go round after round with the P.R. person who questioned our motives for running the story. She admits they didn’t know there was a security breach till I called her. She will say over and over that her company cares and is working hard to fix the problem, but if we break the story, bad guys will suddenly realize there is a treasure trove of financial data available for the taking.
That’s one avenue of thought. The other is that there are many possible victims that don’t even know their social security numbers are vulnerable and we have a responsibility to alert them so they can take the necessary precautions.
To make a very long night short; we lead with the story, but not after multiple conference calls with attorneys, news directors and public relations people.
It was exhausting. I was exhausted. I needed a sandwich and a beer and just zone out.
The beer brewed in Texas feels like Germany.
I am relaxed, bathing in the soft glow of Sportscenter. I can’t shovel enough guacamole into my face. it is green and tasty and melts in my mouth like a pulverized filet.
Between cleaning the bar, the merry bartender regails us with stories about her tatoos.
“What’s the story behind the heart on your bicept. Looks like that would have hurt.”
She laughs. “I was so S**t faced. I don’t even remember that one.”
She smiles. Each part of her body is an ink stained chapter in a book about her.
She is efferfescent and bubbly and calls me babe.
I think she likes me.
Then I hear her call everyone at the bar babe.
She is just that kind of person. A seemingly free spirit. Inviting, fun, can-do.
The bar is officially closed, but her bar is unofficially open.
It’s a nice policy when you can pull it off.
It would be like me throwing a switch at work and breaking into programming.
“I interupt this episode of Dr. Phil to broadcast a story that I felt like telling you.”
She says the kitchen is closed, yet here I am filling up on Guacamole. And all she had to do was shake her money maker for the boys in the back.
Sometimes life is so simple.
We stay at the bar for over an hour.
The door will open sveral times.
“You open?” a frosty faced patron will shout.
“No,” she will say.
“But sit down anyway. Whatta ya need?”
It reminds me of the TV bar, CHEERS.
Norm, everyone shouts as people enter.
And so it goes.
I figure 2 is my limit.
“Can I get my bill?”
“You ok to drive?”
“Yeah. I’m gonna drink this water for a while.”
“Hey I’m a mom. I want everyone to be safe,” she says with real concern.
I smile. “Yeah I’m cool. “
I tip her 30%
Partially because I’m a little buzzed, partially because I cannot add, partially because she is so damn excellent at her job.
If she worked for Olive Garden, this bartender would be on a poster with the caption HOSPITALIANO below her.
This is a night that was haunted by the hounds of frozen hell in a town that pulls the covers up over its chin.
Our little bar tender in the corner bar was a shining light house of accomodation.
She begins entering the bill in the register. She looks down and then turns to me.
“That is so generous.”
“My pleasure. You took care of us when other bars left us high and drive in an alley.”
“What’s your name?,” she says extending her hand. “I’m louise.”
The guys at the end of the bar start chanting her name.
Louise. Louise. Louise.
“She’s the best,” one of them says.
I think they are right.
“You are so adorable,” my friend says to her.
“You are too,” she responds.
We smile and thank her for being so nice.
“Drive safe,” she says.
We open the door and the cold January winds of this sleepy town blow across our skin.
The air is a scalpel cutting open neurons of pain.
What was warm, toasty and good, suddenly has gone to hell in winter’s evil hand basket.
We scream in cold delerium as we sprint across the desolate street toward the car.
Before we get there I am hitting the door unlock button.
As I jerk open the door, I look back at the warm glow of the little cantina on the frozen tundra street.
The bar is closed, but the light still says come on in.
Life’s Crazy™