My buddy Chris used to tend bar with me at an upscale restaurant that closed two years ago. The two of us were the main bartenders for awhile and Chris was nearly always messing w/me. Fine, have your fun - but as one friend of mine likes to say about me, I kind of like to lay in wait and find the perfect opportunity to even the score. Actually, I like to take a commanding lead.
And so it was one night when Chris apparently prowled through my locker, like a raccoon prowling through a dumpster in search of something to eat. In this case Chris was searching for something he could use to mess with me. What he ended up with, was my tube of toothpaste - which he injected dry blue cheese into using the olive injector that we use to make blue cheese stuffed olives. Fucker! No matter, as luck would have it there isn't a toothpaste on the market that either looks or smells anything like blue cheese - and for better reasons than someone not noticing that someone played a prank on them.
I'll admit to being a little surprised, unpleasantly so, the morning I went to brush my teeth after staff meal - but again, the blue cheese/AquaFresh concoction that Chris so kindly made for me didn't get anywhere near my pearly whites. What it did do, was make me think, it's on - and I've got nothing but time for my day tavern shift to think of ways to repay this debt.
Right about now is where I'll say that I'm not the kind of person who would mess with someone like this for no reason other than to mess with someone - but I used to be, and I was really, really good at it. I'll spell it out for you: If you're the kind of person who does something like this to me first, I'm probably the last guy you want to owe you this type of favor.
The first idea I thought of was to tape 40 or so cocktail napkins together, end to end in the dispensers on the bar. I know how Chris will take one or two napkins and walk towards a guest. Knowing that makes me know that this is a good start - but it's only the warm-act. Imagine his surprise when he walks away with what he thinks are one or two napkins and sees that he's got a whole paper-doll string of them along for the ride. Childish. Close to being hilarious - but again, I've got more in store for my old pal.
I talk it up amongst my fellow tavern shifters that day. Lucky for me I did too - because one of them, I think it was Sean, suggested putting plastic wrap neatly over the mouth of some glassware and showed me how if you do that just right, it goes unnoticed until someone tries to pour liquid into the glass - which bartenders do all the time. Sweet, merciful Jesus, do I ever like this little trick! Mad props to Sean for the suggestion - but there's a clown coming to this party and that clown will steal the show.
The "clown", or high point of my series of payback pranks, was brilliant. I asked one of the servers to run to the grocery store after lunch was over and buy a pack of mouse traps for me. My plan was to cut an outline for the trap in the cocktail napkins and have the set trap rigged with a handful of coffee beans so that when he pulled a napkin from the dispenser he got a bit of a shock and a bunch of coffee beans flying at him. Relax, no one is going to get hurt here - but neither is someone going to put blue cheese in my toothpaste and have that deed go unanswered. What am I going to do, tell? Please!
What I did, was ask one of the servers who finished their shift early, to go to the grocery store and buy a pack of mousetraps for me. Yes. Mousetraps. Thankfully, my request was granted. What I did, was cut an outline out in the cocktail napkins that allowed the trap to sit beneath the top few napkins. I taped the bar to make it more like a paddle, and once the trap was set, I put a handful of coffee beans in the trap and covered it perfectly with a few cocktail napkins. The idea was that when Chris pulled a napkin off the top, the trap would spring and hurl a handful of coffee beans at him. By the way, two test runs with this trap had it working beautifully!
My plan was beautiful, it all came together perfectly and it would've worked too...uhm, until Jimbo came into the picture. Despite the fact that I briefed Jimbo when he came in for his evening shift in the tavern that afternoon, when Chris went outside to smoke and Jim came behind the bar to grab a beer for a guest and reached for the napkin, Jim was left remembering what he'd forgotten moments before.
"Chris come back here....it's going to go off!"
I express my disappointment that I'm having to get up from my seat at the bar, where I'd parked my ass for a front row seat to see my pranks bear fruit. I'm not going to waste time scolding Jim for forgetting about my little trick - I've got a trap to reset! By the way, I barely got that done without getting busted by Chris when he came back behind the bar - but I did succeed, thankfully.
Although the trap was reset w/about half the number of beans it originally had, my plan worked very well. It shocked the living B-JEEZUS out of Chris, and it really amused a customer. Chris couldn't believe that I put a mouse trap in the napkins and went to such lengths to do that. He kept saying as much. I couldn't believe Chris put blue cheese in my tube of toothpaste and thought I would let that go unnoticed. I kept saying as much.
Chris: "What would you have said if that would've gone off with my finger in it?!"
Me(also Chris): "I dunno - probably something like, well now, that oughta teach you not to put blue cheese in my fuckin' toothpaste huh?"
What happened next was almost as funny as the look on his face when the mouse trap went off as he pulled the napkin, he couldn't stop asking me what else I'd done behind his bar. Actually that was it - show's over, but damned if I was going to tell him that.
I watched as he opened his cash drawer and stuck a pencil in every slot thinking that the other trap was somewhere in there. I told him he could relax, that while he was right to assume there was indeed another trap, it was in my car (actually years later, it's still in my car) and I suggest he not force me to use it. I couldn't seem to convince him that I was done. Ah...poetic justice shall be the shadow of the man who runs scared - wow, that's pretty good huh? I just thought of that!
