The New Addition to the Family

Byron. His name is Byron! And I love him. He makes me feel safe, comforts me, and walks me to my car. What a man, what a man, what a mighty good man. I could say it again.

Byron is our new Thursday/Friday security guard.

This is actually pretty exciting news. The neighborhood has quickly been worsening; I used to live across the street and moved near Oglethorpe University to get someplace safe. My place of business was robbed twice in a week by the same guy (later caught), so now we have special metal doors at night. Also, there have been an upsurge of robberies along the road, and a high-profile shooting (murder?) two blocks away.

The local news stations are in a particular uproar about this part of town, as concerns the safety of Georgia Tech students. So when two Fridays ago, I drove to work and saw students interviewed a block away and Fox 5 and CBS vans across the street, I knew that the armed robbery of our three patrons had become the newest major story in the series. After a phone call from my mother, she confirmed that the news reported a shooting in the area and correctly assumed it was related to my place of work. Props, Mom. Then later that day, while pouring a beer during the six o'clock news, I saw the Fox story. The road became stock footage -- as well as our front door and sign. Then the reporter walked out our front door and displayed the restaurant logo again. Good job at making the news visually exciting and appealing to all, Fox 5. Good thing most of our patrons don't watch the news.

We have a hunch those robbers had been customers just beforehand. However, I don't understand why they'd target foreign exchange students. Tourists carry money on them, not exchange students. For all that trouble, they only got $20 and a cell phone. And hopefully a warrant for arrest. The robbed French exchange students had never seen a gun before in their lives. "He pointed a gun at me! A gun!" one of them said.

The bartender's thought: "Welcome to America."

The servers were, as a result, in a bit of an uproar about our safety. We even toyed with the idea of a strike. Many bars on the other side of town had shootings/armed robberies inside, and we didn't want to worry about walking to our cars in the dark gravel lot or what could happen. We feel that we've been too lucky so far, having missed encounters by minutes and a matter of yards. We wanted an officer to protect us. Certain servers called the owners to explain the situation, and I was poised to write an email or petition for the cause. However, that Saturday's manager meeting resulted in an outcome that made me feel like it was pointless. And my email-writing partner was out of town, so I lost some fire a week later.

Well.

Last Friday I went to the Atlanta Opera's The Elixir of Love with a coworker. (It was lovely.) I picked her up at the bar, then after a sudden downpour ruined our fancy dress, we went back to the bar for a simple beer. We walked in just a few minutes after eleven, worked our way through the crowd, pointed out a friend at the end of the bar, and on the way, he had managed to be knocked over from his bar stool with a standoff going on. (Needless to say, from what I heard, it wasn't undeserved.) My friend was quickly dragged behind the bar, and minus a bit of his drunken behavior, we had a relatively quiet drink. For about half a beer.

Behind us, the new girl had a table of two mid-thirties men. I had had the guy with crazy short dreds the previous night when he had treated a lady to chicken fingers and a Goose/cran. Now, when a man orders Grey Goose, you can expect one of two things: 1. He's loaded and only drinks the best, giving you a fat tip (unlikely), or 2. He spent all his money on top shelf liquor and you're lucky to get the change. The only reason I recognized him was because he gave me two bucks on $26. I was already biased against him.

I turned around at one point to notice the manager telling these two guys they had to leave because it is inappropriate to tell a server that you would "like to lick her pussy." They gave the manager lip and didn't get up. By this point it was last call, and the bartender managed to kick out the guy who actually did say it (2 on 26), but the friend refused to leave. New Girl told him that although, yes, he wasn't the actual offender, it was still closing time and he had to leave. I can't remember if that was exactly when he flung his pitcher across the restaurant or not.

Both manager and bartender began to dial 911 when the irate customer got up, yelled some, then threw a bar stool across the distance of the bar. That's when they hung up, ran outside after him, and another server called the Georgia Tech cops. I quickly finished the beer as I heard he was being arrested.

As I left the restroom on my way to the car, there was another loud uproar because no one at a large party could figure out how to pay the tab. It was 12:15.

And that's how Byron came into my life today.