I don’t know how you animals were raised, but my upbringing had an emphasis on manners. Not to say that I am not an asshole from time to time. I am sure you can find a few people on this earth who have had a negative experience with me. Shoutout to the guy who thought I was going to pull out in front of him the other day near Best Buy who then proceeded to scream inside his own car at the top of his lungs while I hysterically laughed at him for getting that upset.

Here’s one thing I can say with certainty: You can poll every bartender in the world who has ever served me a drink and they will have zero complaints with me.*

*Complaints is a loose term solely related to the products being served and should not be interpreted to include actions by myself or my acquaintances that occurred outside the immediate serving area. 

Once on a work trip my coworker and I were getting some dinner and we ordered ourselves a couple Voodoo Ranger Juicy Haze IPAs. To this day I’m not sure what she served us, but if that was the Juicy Haze IPA then I would wager that tap system had not been cleaned out in the 3-year history of that establishment. After the second sip the guy I was with had informed the bartender that something was drastically wrong. The bartender, who looked like her name was Carol, took his beer without hesitation and dumped it down the drain. She didn’t have the slightest look of anger or embarrassment on her face. In fact she didn’t have any look on her face. I would describe her expression and mannerisms as 1000% neutral. She would have made one hell of a news reporter. You’d never see through her bias, she just genuinely did not give a shit about anything/anyone and was operating like a robot.

Anyway, after she dumped out his beer, she obviously returned and made a gesture towards me as if to say “let me dump that out for you.” This put me in quite an awkward position as I have never sent back or dumped out a beer in my life that I can remember. I spent years polishing off “abandoned wounded soldiers” in dingy State College bars with my brother. I don’t think of myself as superior to any stale or shitty beer. So I put on my own version of a poker face and told Carol that I was doing fine. After a few seconds of standoff she acknowledged that I would not give up the beer, and asked if it tasted OK. I think I said something to the effect of “I’ll drink it, no worries” neither admitting it was disgusting nor stating that it would have been approved by FDA standards. I remember drinking it and thinking to myself that an illness may ensue later that night or the following day. However, I don’t remember if that illness ever showed up.

Just this past week I took out a Dogfish 60 IPA draft that tasted like it had morphed into a cherry-flavored Sour. Probably a year ago I ordered a coconut beer that was served to me without the disclaimer that it had coconut in it. Were my eyes watering as I drank them? Yes. Did I plug my nose at any point during the consumption? Probably. Did I have some negative nancy conversation with the bartender about my dissatisfaction so they could apologize profusely yet offer no recourse? No.

The point of this story is that if you are ever drinking with me and have the nerve to send something back, I will silently judge you for the rest of eternity. There’s a p-word I’d like to say here that is no longer socially acceptable.