February 13, 2007 - Tuesday

February 13, 2007 - Tuesday
Smart Swerve

I'm about to start working in a bar nearby. It's a little place which caters mostly to cops and firemen. It's optimistically called Baker St. Café and can sit maybe 70 people comfortably. There is one very minor hump I have to overcome; in order to get a job bartending or serving in Ontario (the province in which Canada's Crapital is situated) I need to get official certification from some penny-ass organization entitled 'Smart Serve'. An organization that is, no doubt, comprised of the same people that get giddy about toddler-leashes, and think that marijuana causes psychopathic dementia. That is correct. I need a special document that proves that I have passed an online test (which costs $37 –roughly 9000CZK) in order to work in any place that serves alcohol in exchange for money.

One would think the certificate proves that you know how to pour the proper pint, make an excellent Mojito, stir a killer Tom Collins, or recognize when your wine has morphed into cat urine. You would think it's about socializing with clients, creating a nice atmosphere for the regulars, identifying underage drinking, or simply correctly memorizing orders.

You would think that, and you would be wrong.

Essentially the certificate shows that you can identify drunk people and deal with them within the strict legal confines of a society so afraid of it's own legislation that nobody is allowed to do anything short of breathing. Or in their own words:

"Smart Serve Ontario is a non-profit organization dedicated to developing and delivering a responsible service training program to all individuals who serve alcohol beverages or work where alcoholic beverages are served in the Province of Ontario."

Translation: We are bunch of suck-ass sycophants who are deeply troubled by anybody having more fun than we are. We encourage you to be the same...In Ontario.

And, where did these fuckers come from?

Well, as it turns out, while I was away there were a number incidents of people leaving bars while heavily inebriated and severely injuring someone. In these cases the court held the bar responsible for damages incurred to the defendant. Or to break it down: Man goes to bar, man gets drunk, drunk man wallops other man, wallopee sues bar for intoxifying drunk man.
And thus the circle of life is complete.

It gets weirder (this from the Smart Serve online training manual):

"Our courts have found that a 'duty of care' is owed by the establishment to it's guest and others to protect him or her –and, in fact, others– from foreseeable injury. A 'foreseeable injury' is any harm or injury that a person should have reasonably anticipated would arise as a result of his or her act or omission."

Translation: The courts have imposed an obligation on bar owners –and, by association, their staff– to predict how a person will carry on after they have left the bar with the same kind of clairvoyance sometimes attributed to Jesus at the Last Supper.

In the words of Donny Darko: What the fuck?

Does this make any sense to anyone not within the later stages of rigor mortis? Look, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the vast majority of people that go to bars are going there to get drunk. Maybe not falling-down shitfaced, but at least pleasantly wobbly. Granted, I'm sure there are people who are abstaining and are going to bars to meet their friends, but you can rest assured that their friends are not in bars to drink apple juice and chastely listen to Vivaldi.
Come on, we're dealing with drunk people in a bar here. Who knows what a drunk person is going to do once they've left the bar? The assumption here seems to be that a drunk person is up to no good once they've staggered off the premises –but I've gotten mean-drunk and distributed clothing to homeless people afterwards. I've seen happy but hammered girls get into wild screeching catfights. Trying to predict what someone will do, or how they will act, after they've had a few is like trying to predict a tsunami based on the facial expressions of the local fish.
Sure, I've come from a country where doctors have a shot of Slivovice (Czech for 'I made this with linoleum polish') before doing open-heart surgery and drunk driving is considered an art form, but doesn't this whole thing strike you as…well…fascist?

I mean, maybe I'm being narrow-minded, but i thought the whole point of bars was to achieve various degrees of soused. To try to implement an anti-drunk policy in places that are licensed to serve alcohol is like trying to implement a no-sex policy in bordellos. It defeats the purpose and smacks of the kind of thinking attributed to the mentally-retarded, and people that got wedgied too often in secondary school.

In the online course there is some gibberish about a 'standard drink' (one pint of beer, one glass of wine, one shot of spirits) and the effects this has on a 'normal person' of 25 years of age and weighing 175 pounds. It judges that this 'normal person' after having drank 3 'standard drinks' is above the legal limit which is a blood alcohol content of 0.08%.

My question is what 'normal person' is this? Is this 'normal person' Amish? Because this nonsense only applies to someone who has never had a drink before in their lives. You drink and eventually you build up a tolerance. It's simply not as cut-and-dry as the Smart Serve people think it is. Or the jack-asses that are given increasing amounts of authority over things they know nothing about and draw a black and white line where there should be a blotch of grey.
I can't express enough how inherently wrong this kind of thinking is. Essentially what this kind of hare-brained legislation has done is put –not only the responsibility for the safety of bar-goers, but– the responsibility for the safety of anybody the bar-goer might encounter afterwards squarely on the shoulders of establishment.

And what happens if a woman is raped by some drunk motherfucker? Is the bar liable? How about this: a couple goes into a bar, gets drunk, goes home, shags like wild chimpanzees, and the woman gets pregnant. The bar should pay for the kid's college education? Should an alcoholic sue the bar that he/she frequents?

Don't laugh people, it's not far off. I'm telling you.

This kind of thing really, really makes me fucking despise this place.

More on this as I continue with the Smart Serve course…