Friday, February 03, 2006
Grumpiness can be an art form
This post was originally written the evening of jan 31, 06 on a computer that didn't have access to the web. It took until today to get it here.
Kenny may be the most miserable SOB I've ever met. I love him.
There comes a point where being miserable becomes charming. While I recognize that part of it just shielding, there is a certain charm to someone whose best compliment to you is greeting you by saying "hey, trouble," or "hey you old fart" when he's at least a thirty years older than you are.
I think that this has hit me today because there have been a couple situations today where the idea of the curmudgeon has come up in casual conversation. I work in an office where one of the characters that is there is a worker who says he is doing time. He's looking forward to quitting. He mentions that on a regular basis, saying he only needs to finish paying off the truck so he can retire. He is old enough already, having both time and age to retire according to most of the rules that I'm used to, but is just too full of piss and vinegar to actually do because he wouldn't have as much to bellyache about.
Later, I was talking to someone else who asked me if a certain bartender in town was getting nastier. I mentioned that while she was never the nicest bartender in town, she didn't seem any grumpier than usual. Of course you notice that I didn't say that she wasn't grumpy, sarcastic, or inhospitable, I just said that I didn't notice any change in her general demeanor.
Of course she happened to be working tonight. I said hello and signed the book and she seemed to be in her usual mood. Should she be on the other side of the bar, even if she looked like Kathy Ireland (who is the best looking babe ever), I would probably not last past the "hi" stage because of the negative waves. She was civil and almost nice for the most part but I did notice more negative waves coming from her toward some patrons than others. I guess my general attitude of not worrying about stuff makes me easier to deal with, but I think that the observation may have been not incorrect.
Some of my favorite bartenders were grumpy, negative waves, types of folks. My favorite of all time is still Norm, who owned Chief's Cafe in Oakland when I went to PITT, who as I sat with an (underage) buddy of mine was the subject of an armed robbery. As the guy was waving around the gun, Norm spent the next five minutes bitching the guy out. He called him every name in the book and called him everything but a white guy, because he wasn't. About half way through the rant, where he told this guy waving a weapon, what he would do if he ever got the chance (and it wasn't bake cookies) he never broke rhythm telling the crook what he was as he told the missus to get the (expletive) money out of register but not all the change. After all, he'd need it because everybody was still drinking at the bar. The guy took the money and left.
After that, I looked at my buddy and said, "Stroke, do you realize we just witnessed an armed robbery?"
"No, you just witnessed an armed robbery. I'm not supposed to be here."
"Oh, yeah. We'll have to remember that."
We finished up our drinks, (we were getting ready to leave anyway), and I stopped up at the bar to talk to Norm. I asked him if there was a problem if we headed out as Red was calling the cops. He said that there wasn't as he knew the SOB and would get his money back in a few days.
I left "the Chief" a bigger tip than usual that night.
I went back to Chief's a few years after I got out of school. Red had gotten sick and Norm wasn't up to keeping it without her. They had taken the one wall, which had paintings on the wall and gotten rid of them. Back in the day they had served Schlitz beer (not Bull which was big at the time and was not a great tasting beer), now they served the usual beers that the college crowd drank. The steel workers that had made up a large percentage of the drinkers there, when I was going in there for that very reason, who kept Sinatra and Crosby and the Andrews Sisters on the juke box were gone. So were the songs.
My favorite bar as a college student had become a college bar. It was the worst moment of a nice trip back to school.
I've been friends with grumpy old men since I was working the American Legion Bingo as a 13 year old. I loved working with guys who had fought in WW1 who the guys that fought in WW2 would give crap to. "Old Parks there, he has heart trouble and dropsy," Steve (the boss) would say. "Once he drops into a seat, he ain't got to the heart to get up."
There is a big difference between being cranky and being negative. Thankfully I've learned that. It's unfortunately not a lesson learned by many of the political figures today.
I often describe myself as either an optimistic pessimist or as a pessimistic optimist. I'm pretty sure that’s because I've run into a lot of them over the years. And they were usually right. I hope I can be just as accurate.
Kenny may be the most miserable SOB I've ever met. I love him.
There comes a point where being miserable becomes charming. While I recognize that part of it just shielding, there is a certain charm to someone whose best compliment to you is greeting you by saying "hey, trouble," or "hey you old fart" when he's at least a thirty years older than you are.
I think that this has hit me today because there have been a couple situations today where the idea of the curmudgeon has come up in casual conversation. I work in an office where one of the characters that is there is a worker who says he is doing time. He's looking forward to quitting. He mentions that on a regular basis, saying he only needs to finish paying off the truck so he can retire. He is old enough already, having both time and age to retire according to most of the rules that I'm used to, but is just too full of piss and vinegar to actually do because he wouldn't have as much to bellyache about.
Later, I was talking to someone else who asked me if a certain bartender in town was getting nastier. I mentioned that while she was never the nicest bartender in town, she didn't seem any grumpier than usual. Of course you notice that I didn't say that she wasn't grumpy, sarcastic, or inhospitable, I just said that I didn't notice any change in her general demeanor.
Of course she happened to be working tonight. I said hello and signed the book and she seemed to be in her usual mood. Should she be on the other side of the bar, even if she looked like Kathy Ireland (who is the best looking babe ever), I would probably not last past the "hi" stage because of the negative waves. She was civil and almost nice for the most part but I did notice more negative waves coming from her toward some patrons than others. I guess my general attitude of not worrying about stuff makes me easier to deal with, but I think that the observation may have been not incorrect.
Some of my favorite bartenders were grumpy, negative waves, types of folks. My favorite of all time is still Norm, who owned Chief's Cafe in Oakland when I went to PITT, who as I sat with an (underage) buddy of mine was the subject of an armed robbery. As the guy was waving around the gun, Norm spent the next five minutes bitching the guy out. He called him every name in the book and called him everything but a white guy, because he wasn't. About half way through the rant, where he told this guy waving a weapon, what he would do if he ever got the chance (and it wasn't bake cookies) he never broke rhythm telling the crook what he was as he told the missus to get the (expletive) money out of register but not all the change. After all, he'd need it because everybody was still drinking at the bar. The guy took the money and left.
After that, I looked at my buddy and said, "Stroke, do you realize we just witnessed an armed robbery?"
"No, you just witnessed an armed robbery. I'm not supposed to be here."
"Oh, yeah. We'll have to remember that."
We finished up our drinks, (we were getting ready to leave anyway), and I stopped up at the bar to talk to Norm. I asked him if there was a problem if we headed out as Red was calling the cops. He said that there wasn't as he knew the SOB and would get his money back in a few days.
I left "the Chief" a bigger tip than usual that night.
I went back to Chief's a few years after I got out of school. Red had gotten sick and Norm wasn't up to keeping it without her. They had taken the one wall, which had paintings on the wall and gotten rid of them. Back in the day they had served Schlitz beer (not Bull which was big at the time and was not a great tasting beer), now they served the usual beers that the college crowd drank. The steel workers that had made up a large percentage of the drinkers there, when I was going in there for that very reason, who kept Sinatra and Crosby and the Andrews Sisters on the juke box were gone. So were the songs.
My favorite bar as a college student had become a college bar. It was the worst moment of a nice trip back to school.
I've been friends with grumpy old men since I was working the American Legion Bingo as a 13 year old. I loved working with guys who had fought in WW1 who the guys that fought in WW2 would give crap to. "Old Parks there, he has heart trouble and dropsy," Steve (the boss) would say. "Once he drops into a seat, he ain't got to the heart to get up."
There is a big difference between being cranky and being negative. Thankfully I've learned that. It's unfortunately not a lesson learned by many of the political figures today.
I often describe myself as either an optimistic pessimist or as a pessimistic optimist. I'm pretty sure that’s because I've run into a lot of them over the years. And they were usually right. I hope I can be just as accurate.
