Ranting 12 hours later

Yesterday I + a few co-workers + a few AIR team members gathered for happy hour festivities. We went to Mohawk’s Grizzly bar, which was dirt-cheap yet pretty dead, for a few hours before heading to the Jackalope for food and more drinks. It was guest-bartender-day (or whatever they call it) at the Grizzly bar, and guess who happened to be guest-bartending? The band members of What Made Milwaukee Famous. No, I didn’t go beserk. I just told them that I was going to their shows and that I was excited, to which they replied “well, we’re excited you’re going to be there!”.

Anyway, I’m going to mention something that did happen at the Mohawk, unrelated to WMMF, that will be semi-pertinent for the latter story about which I am ranting. When I went to the bar to get my 2nd drink, after I told WMMF about having tickets to their shows, a dude sitting at the bar turned to me and said “You live on [fill in the name of the road I live on here] Drive.” At first he tried to convince me he was a neighbor but then later just admitted he read information off of my driver’s license (which sits in an exposed pocket of my wallet). Naturally, I was pretty freaked out - this random person knows where I live? Is he some hidden stalker? I actually told him he was freaking me out quite a few times throughout the episode. I think that got the attention of a couple of the band members, and at one point one of them said something to effect of “He’s our video guy, don’t pay attn/don’t worry.” The dude said some other stuff to me right before I left the bar that I honestly don’t remember/didn’t hear. I’m guessing that’s a good thing. Anyway, the major thing that got me thinking from this was, now some guy knows where I live by glimpsing at my ID. Wonderful. I’m actually not really worried about him specifically, but just the idea of people being able to gather information about you without you knowing is pretty… well, freaky. Of course, there are so many forms I fill out online/etc. where you give such information to who knows. Oh well, for some reason those don’t seem as freaky.

So fast forward to the Jackalope, where we’re just hanging out and probably talking about dorky web stuff. Up comes one of the employees to me and (very rudely) tells me, “You’re not 21. You need to leave right now.” He actually looked like a busboy to me (definitely not a bouncer), and I really couldn’t tell what his deal was. My co-worker Wendy must’ve thought the same thing, because she immediately says to him, “Are you really serious? Or are you just finding an excuse to talk to her?”I try to tell him that I’m 26 years old and that my age wasn’t relevant anyway because I wasn’t drinking there. Soon other people start chiming in about how ridiculous he was acting. But he just kept on threatening to (personally) make me leave because I was “definitely not 21″. Naturally, I was tempted to just whip out my ID and be like, you’re an idiot. Go away. Leave me alone. But after the incident at the Mohawk, I was hesitant to show this guy my ID, especially since we weren’t sure if he was really going to kick us out or if he was doing a really pathetic job of trying to hit on me. Anyway, we were all pretty baffled and eventually just decided to leave. I did end up showing the dude my ID before we left, though, and I did tell him off for being an idiot. I didn’t want him to think that he actually succeeded in making a sub-21-year-old leave the bar.

When I think about it now, I’m pretty amazed by how rudely we were treated. I’m not going to ban the Jackalope or anything because I’m pretty sure it was just this one dude’s issues. I guess we were all so surprised that anyone could be really be that rude we didn’t even get mad or anything. I know I look young, but really. Instead of insisting that I wasn’t 21 and demanding I leave, why didn’t he just ask to see my ID? In fact, he didn’t even mention the word “ID” a single time through the whole thing. And it’s not like we were being rowdy. In fact, I’m pretty sure we were just standing around talking about web design/development (really rowdy stuff). I just don’t get it. Oh well.